


The Alternatieve

by TitusOates



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A Little Bit Smutty, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Azkaban, Basically everyone is misguided, But not that much, Comedy, Crack, Death Eaters, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Help them Harry, Humor, M/M, Mild Angst, Misguided Dumbledore, Misguided Voldemort, Not Epilogue Compliant, Politics, Romance, Screwball plot, Spontaneous combustion even, Unintentionally Dark!Harry, a bit OOC, fast burn, in parts, just a bit, maybe a lot OOC depending on your point of view, silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-08 06:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 56,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TitusOates/pseuds/TitusOates
Summary: Post Deathly Hallows - Whilst Harry is a trainee auror, he accidentally gets trapped in an alternative universe where Dumbledore never fell out with Grindelwald and accepted the position of Minister for Magic.  Action takes place in 1945. Harry befriends troubled shop assistant and aspiring Dark Lord, Tom Riddle, and they end up falling for each other as they try to stop Dumbledore and Grindelwald from uniting the Deathly Hallows. Hilarity ensues.**The title is not a misspelling! It's just a really bad pun...**A Russian translation can be foundhere!





	1. Through the Pensieve, and What Harry Found There

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. This is a work in progress, but I really am determined to finish it, and not make it too long. I will probably end up parts of it as time goes along, but I thought I would just start put it out there already just to see if anybody enjoys it and to try to get some constructive criticism. 
> 
> The characters are sometimes a little different from the way they appear in canon, for comedic purposes, as well as by way of "alternative interpretation" (or should that be alternatieve...? Hahaha!). My view is that nobody can be a villain 24/7; everyone has a little bit of downtime for cracking jokes and messing around with their friends, especially when they are still teenagers; and people who grow up to be wise old men and women are often that way precisely because they made poor and/or downright idiotic choices in their younger years.
> 
> Given the setting, I feel I should say that I've never seen Fantastic Beasts so don't expect any allusions to that. 
> 
> So, please enjoy, and I would love to hear what you like and what you don't. Thanks.
> 
> I guess this story has evolved a little bit since I started writing it, and I would like to thank everybody who has kept reading since the beginning!

Harry stood in his office, staring out of the window into the bustling inner courtyard of the Ministry.  It felt strange, having an office.  Only a couple of months ago he’d been a trainee – although, to be fair, he had never really fit in with the other juniors.  Most of them regarded him with a mixture of fear and awe; he’d seen things that they couldn’t even begin to imagine.  After the turmoil of his school days, life as an Auror seemed almost mundane.  Almost.

Some tasks were more difficult than others.  He turned away from the window and contemplated the series of glass vials which had been stacked neatly on his desk.  They were all labelled in the same familiar hand: deliberate and curling, with rather elaborate flourishes on the long stems.  Even though it had been a good few years since Dumbledore’s death, seeing traces of his mentor in small items like this still brought a lump to Harry’s throat.  The pain of loss was so strong sometimes it surprised him, like a cold knife suddenly twisting in his heart.

He’d been putting off the task for months now.  Dealing with any of Dumbledore’s things, never mind his memories, was somewhat painful.  But in a way, Harry also felt he was invading his old headmaster’s privacy.  He knew, of course, that Dumbledore’s memories held precious information, some of which might be vital in helping the Auror department round up any remaining Death Eaters; he also guessed that Dumbledore, an intensely private person who planned for every eventuality, including his own death, would probably not have left anything around he didn’t want anyone to see.  But still… Harry ran his calloused fingers over the delicate glass vials, noting that many were labelled with the names of known Death Eaters: Avery, Black, Carrow, Dolohov…

Harry started slightly as he reached an unlabelled vial.  It was rather larger than the others, and rather than containing the familiar silvery gossamer whisps, seemed to hold something of a darker, smokier consistency.  He shook it, and watched the contents billow slightly before settling gloomily at the bottom of the vial.  He frowned.  Why did it look so different?

Seized with a sudden curiosity, Harry drew the blinds and locked the door of his office, stripping the dark cloth from the Ministry pensieve.  The darkened room was immediately filled with an ethereal, silvery light, which rippled on the walls like reflections of water.

He uncorked the glass tube and attempted to tip the contents into the pensieve.  The smoke travelled slowly, almost despondently, settling over the basin in thick, pulsating waves.  Harry had never seen a memory like this before.  He was slightly perturbed, but in a way it only made him more curious.  Eventually, the smoke seemed to sink into the swirling liquid, turning it dark and cloudy. Harry stepped forward and leant over the bowl.

Once more he felt the sensation of being dragged headfirst through something icy and wet; then he hit something hard and hollow, and his head rattled at the impact.  Harry groaned and cursed. He didn’t remember entering a memory _hurting_ so much last time.  He reached for his glasses, which had fallen from his face and landed a short distance away, cursing at the hairline crack which now invaded his field of vision.  As proficient he had become in defence against the Dark Arts, he had never truly managed to master _oculus reparo_.

He blinked, looking around the room, and was momentarily confused by what he saw.  There was the same cupboard, and the same desk, and the same pensieve on the desk, that had been standing in Harry’s office just a moment ago.  Maybe he hadn’t entered the memory at all.  It had looked a little bit odd – maybe it was defective, Harry thought.  Still, there was something strange about the room itself, now – the light that was coming in through the window seemed dimmer, the furniture seemed slightly out of place, and he could hear an odd – yet somehow familiar – whirring and clicking sound in the air that had not been there previously.

Harry was still lying on the floor, feeling somewhat dazed, when he heard someone enter the room hurriedly and close the door with a quiet click.  The young auror was on the point of leaping to his feet and confronting the intruder, when the latter spoke in an all-too-familiar voice, freezing Harry’s limbs and stopping his protest short in his throat.

“ _Colloportus_.”

From his vantage point on the floor, he saw purple robes with an emerald trim, gliding across the floor towards the fireplace.  Harry’s heart leapt in his chest, and an irrepressible smile of joy spread across his face.  There was a rustle of fabric, and the sound of floo powder being thrown into the grate.  Harry saw the glow of the leaping green flames, and heard another voice – unfamiliar, this time – emanate from inside them, although the face of the speaker was obscured by the robed figure which stood in front of it.

“Albus,” said the new voice, with an audible smile.  It was a rich, pleasant voice, with the slight hint of a continental accent.  “How is my favourite Minister for Magic today?  Why, are those new rrobes?  Glorrious…” His R’s were soft and guttural. 

“Gellert,” said Dumbledore, curtly, and Harry was surprised at the icy tone.  “Any news?”

“Oh, such a terrrrible frown!  Such impatience… But these things take time, my dear…”

“I am aware of that,” said Dumbledore, coldly.  “But I would appreciate an update on your progress.  It has been two months since you said you had a lead.”

“Alas, no – it was a false trail.  Needless to say, the useless informant was punished –“

“I have been meaning to speak to you about that,” said Dumbledore.  “You are making far too many enemies for yourself.  The tide of opinion here in England has been turning against you –“

“Then you must convince them otherwise, my dear! Educate them!  _For the grreater good_!”

Dumbledore sighed.

“Anyway, my dear,” Gellert continued.  “Perhaps some good may yet come from you English and your slavish worship of the _ancien régime_.  I believe the stone never left England, and is still in the possession of one of your so-called ‘pure-blood’ families, like the cloak.  Break them, and we will find it.”

“But I have questioned every pure-blood student at Hogwarts –“

“I know your esteem for your _alma mater_ is great, my dear, but perhaps it is time to – what is it that you English say? – ‘think outside the box’?”

Dumbledore paused for a moment.

“Perhaps you are right.”

Gellert’s voice was full of mock surprise.

 “What was that?  Perhaps – I – the lowly Gellert Grindelwald – have said something worthy of the consideration of the great –“

“Oh, shut up,” said Dumbledore.  “How is the wand?”

“It is everything we ever imagined, and more,” said Gellert.  “I cannot wait for you to see it.  Have you tested the cloak?”

“Not yet.  I am waiting for the right occasion.”

“Perhaps on my next visit we can try it together.”

“Perhaps…!”

Harry, who until that moment had been listening to the conversation with rapt fascination, shifted uncomfortably.  He found any suggestion of his beloved old teacher being anything more than a completely asexual creature rather disconcerting.

Dumbledore tensed.  “I must go,” he said, suddenly.

Gellert began to speak again, a note of disappointment in his voice, but there was another rustle of fabric as Dumbledore threw more powder on the fire to extinguish the flames.  Gellert’s voice cut off abruptly.  He whipped around and strode rapidly over to the desk under which Harry was lying.

In all the years Harry had known Dumbledore, he had only seen him truly angry once or twice, and it had been terrible to behold – but this was even worse.  Dumbledore stood before him, much younger than Harry had ever known him, long auburn hair falling in cascades almost down to his waist.  His face was pale with rage and his eyes flashed icy fire behind the half-moon spectacles.  His mouth was a hard, grim line, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.  He spoke in a quiet voice, which made the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand straight up.

“How long have you been here?”

“I – uh – er –“ Harry stuttered, feeling slightly ridiculous.  Then a sudden thought struck him.  “Wait – you can see me?”

Dumbledore’s anger faded slightly, to be replaced with an almost pitying expression. 

“I’m afraid I can,” he said.  “As commendable as your efforts at finding a hiding place have been, the desk is slightly lacking from certain angles.”

Harry blinked.  “Oh – no – I mean – I thought – normally, in the pensieve, they can’t see you – I mean.”  He was struggling to form a coherent sentence.

Dumbledore glanced slowly from Harry to the pensieve and back again.

“But you are not in the pensieve.  You are on the floor.  Under a desk.  In my office.”

“I thought it was my office,” said Harry, desperately, only half aware of how deranged he was sounding.

“No, alas,” said Dumbledore.  “How much did you hear, just now?”

Harry gazed at him for a moment, and decided it was useless trying to lie.

“Everything, basically,” he said, feeling incredibly guilty. 

“Ah,” said Dumbledore, sadly.  “Unfortunate.  And did you realise to whom I was speaking?”

“Yes,” said Harry.  “You were talking to Grindelwald.”

“Indeed,” said Dumbledore.  He bit his lip and furrowed his brow.  “This is grave – very grave.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry.  “I just didn’t know what to do.  I was confused – I mean – one minute, I was in my office – and then – in the pensieve – and then here!”

He wasn’t entirely sure what to think about the exchange he had just overheard.  He knew, of course, that Dumbledore and Grindelwald had been friendly in their youth, and they had planned to unite the Deathly Hallows.  Still, Harry had been under the impression that had stopped early on, and Dumbledore had fought against Grindelwald, eventually defeating him in their legendary duel in 1945.  He found it slightly alarming that their friendship had continued on into adulthood, and he was disappointed that Dumbledore had hidden the truth from him.

“What is your name?” asked Dumbledore.

Harry felt a twinge of surprise and disappointment that Dumbledore didn’t know him – but of course, that was only to be expected.  This Dumbledore had never met Harry, and would only do so years into the future.

“Harry Potter,” Harry said.

Dumbledore’s eyes widened a fraction.  “Potter…?” he said.  “Of course, now I look at you… I had no idea.  Is this about the cloak?”

“No,” said Harry, with a flash of eager hope.  Had Dumbledore recognised him?  “Like I said, I don’t even know how I got in here.” 

Dumbledore continued to regard him closely.  His anger had by now almost entirely dissipated, and he wore instead a more familiar, kind but baleful expression. 

“I believe you,” said Dumbledore, gently.  “But I am afraid I will have to kill you, all the same.”

Harry jumped up in alarm, bashing his head painfully against the desk as he did so.

“Oww… What?!”

“You overheard a very sensitive conversation just now,” Dumbledore continued, softly.  “I simply cannot allow you to leave this room.  You must understand.”

“But - no – I –!” Harry spluttered, incoherent with hurt and outrage. “Professor, it’s me – Harry!”

“I am sorry, Harry,” said Dumbledore, raising his wand.

Faced with the threat, Harry became suddenly calm, and his auror training kicked in.  Quick as a flash, he whipped his wand out of his pocket.

“ _Expelliarmus_!”

Dumbledore’s wand went flying, and Harry leapt towards the window, where he disapparated.

 


	2. The Pensieve’s Riddle

Harry re-apparated again in the middle of Diagon Alley, which had been the first place to jump into his mind as he was trying to escape Dumbledore.  He was satisfied with his choice - it was just far enough away from the Ministry to give him a brief reprieve, and also seemed the most likely place where he could find some sort of help for the impossible situation he had found himself in.  Wherever he was, he had to get back to normality, and fast.  It was only a matter of time before Dumbledore would guess his whereabouts.

The alley looked barely different from when he and Ginny had popped into Quality Quidditch Supplies at the weekend to buy some broom polish.  Witches and wizards hurried by in their garish hats and robes the same as they always did, although there were some subtle differences.  There was no Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, making the whole place seem slightly more sombre, and there was an ugly storefront advertising House Elves where Florean Fortescue’s should have been.  Still, here was Ollivander’s, and Flourish and Blott’s, and Eeylops Owl Emporium, looking exactly the same as always.  Harry found this rather comforting, amidst the mass of confused thoughts and emotions which were currently churning in his brain.

Harry stopped in front of Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment, thought for a moment, and went in.  A tinkling bell sounded, and a yawning, spotty shop assistant slouched down from behind the counter to meet him.

“Can I help you?” he said, in a bored voice.

“Hopefully,” said Harry.  “Have you got any pensieves?”

“Uhhh…”  A look of confusion crossed the boy’s face.  He retreated back towards the counter and yelled into the rear of the shop.  “HAVE WE GOT ANY PENSIEVES?”

“ _Any what_?” came a faint voice from within.

“PENSIEVES,” bellowed the boy.

There was a pause.

“ _No_ ,” came the voice, eventually.

“No,” said the boy to Harry, decisively.

“Oh,” said Harry, slightly put out.  “Do you happen to know where I might find one?”

“Er…” said the boy, and retreated to the back of the shop again.

“DO YOU KNOW WHERE HE MIGHT FIND ONE?”

There was another pause.

“ _Who?_ ” came the voice from within.

“CUSTOMER.”

“ _What does he want?_ ”

“PENSIEVE.”

“ _Well we haven’t got any._ ”

Harry started to become exasperated. 

“You know what – it’s all right – I’ll just go –“ he said, heading towards the door.

“ _Tell him to try Borgin and Burke’s,_ ” came the faint voice.

“You could try –“ began the spotty assistant.

“Thanks, I heard,” said Harry, slamming the door behind him.

He was more than a little apprehensive about going to Borgin & Burke’s.  The few experiences he had had with that place of business had been less than positive, to say the least.  Still, desperate times called for even more desperate measures.

He made his way towards Knockturn Alley, hurrying just as much as he could without drawing attention to himself.  Not that he really needed to worry – everyone was pretty much ignoring him, anyway.  This was what Harry found strangest of all.  He was so used to being known wherever he went, greeted by smiles and nods from complete strangers, or at the very least flashes of cold recognition from former Death Eaters and their sympathizers.  Now, he found himself lost in a sea of blank faces, of people wrapped up in their own business, looking straight through him.  He might as well have been wearing the cloak of invisibility.

He eventually arrived at the dusty shop-front in the most shadowy corner of Knockturn Alley.  He gazed up at the fading sign which hung above the door, swinging almost imperceptibly in the slight breeze.  He steeled himself, putting any unpleasant memories to the back of his mind, and pushed open the door.  He was immediately hit by an awful musty smell, of damp parchment mixed with mothballs and something altogether worse.  The dimly-lit shop was piled high from floor to ceiling with its usual array of glittering antiques, odd trinkets, half-forgotten implements of torture, cursed parlour-games and the like.  Harry peered through the gloom, remembering how much he hated the place.

Suddenly a shrill voice rang out from a rear corner of the shop, and a wizened and bent figure, dressed in a vaguely oriental manner, emerged from behind a shelf, hobbling precariously on a bejewelled walking stick.

“Well, hello there, young man,” wheedled the old wizard, whom Harry did not recognise; it wasn’t Borgin, at any rate.  “What can we do for you today?”  He leered at Harry with a crooked, yellow-toothed smile.

Harry cringed, but tried to mask it as a polite smile.

“Hello,” he said.  “I’ve just been recommended your services by Wiseacre’s - I’m looking for a pensieve.  They didn’t have any, apparently.  They told me to try here.”

“Well, you certainly wouldn’t find something as specialist as that in old Wiseacre’s, m’boy…. Everything they have is straight off the production line… Let me see… There ought to be something, perhaps in the back… the boy will know.  Boy!  BOY!”

His shrill, reedy voice was even more irritating than Wiseacre’s spotty assistant’s, and the last thing Harry wanted was a repeat of that saga.  Fortunately, no response from the boy seemed forthcoming.

The wizened old man started to grumble under his breath.  “That boy is a law unto himself… I don’t know why I employ him, half the time… useless, lazy… but he does have the eye…” Then he squinted up at Harry, changing his tone suddenly back to the simpering one he had employed at the beginning. “He’s probably in the back, why don’t you run along and ask him yourself… It will take me the best part of an hour to go and come back myself, at my age…”

He indicated a small door in the far side of the shop, behind the counter.  Harry made his way over, twisted the brass doorknob and peeked in.  The back room was even darker and dustier than the main area of the shop, illuminated by a single candle on a desk in one corner.  A young man of around Harry’s age sat there, reading from a huge book which took up almost the whole desk space, aside from where a goblet of acrid-smelling potion was balanced precariously in the corner.  He seemed completely engrossed, and did not look up as Harry entered, and his longish dark hair fell over his eyes as he read, partially shielding his face from view.  Yet Harry recognised him, simply from the way he sat, with proud rigid shoulders; the way he chewed on his lip as he thought hard; the way Harry’s own chest constricted and his scar tingled at the sight of him.  He was unmistakable.  He stood transfixed, unable to move from the door, unable to speak – unable to do anything, apart from look at Tom Riddle.

Eventually, Tom reached out a long-fingered, white hand, ostensibly towards the goblet, but miscalculating the direction slightly, he instead grasped at thin air.  Irritated, he looked up, and noticed the chink of light in the doorway, and Harry standing in the middle of it, the glow of the shop behind him catching in his perennially messy hair and giving him an odd kind of halo.  Tom’s heart gave a disturbing little leap.  He put down to nerves, due to having almost spilled wakefulness potion all over an incredibly rare book which was to be delivered to a client the following day.

“What do you want?” he asked Harry, rudely, forgetting in his confusion the niceties he normally reserved for customers.

Harry opened his mouth, but no sound came out at first.  He was still trying to make sense of the overwhelming emotion he felt, looking at Tom, which so far surpassed even his encounter with Dumbledore.  As Lord Voldemort, Tom had been the bane of Harry’s existence, having murdered his parents and destroyed any chance Harry might have had at a normal life… and yet… and yet… Harry had never quite managed to hate him as much as so many others had done; perhaps it was because of the magical connection between them, which meant that for most of his life, a piece of Voldemort’s soul lived inside Harry.  It is hard to hate someone when you have been that close.

And however complex Harry’s feelings towards Lord Voldemort, they were ten times more so when it came to Tom Riddle.  Although he knew they were one and the same person, Harry often found it difficult to square in his head.   He had first encountered Voldemort’s younger self through a diary at the age of 12, and, somewhat improbably, his first schoolboy crush had been on the 50-year-old memory of a handsome prefect with dark eyes and a soft voice.  He still remembered the intensity of those feelings, and how traumatized he had been when he realised what – and who – Riddle really was. 

“You…” Harry said, finally, his voice husky with emotion.  It was a statement, a greeting, an observation and an accusation all rolled into one.

Riddle raised an eyebrow.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean – uh – that’s not what I meant,” stumbled Harry, turning red.  “I actually came for – um – a pensieve – I was told – uh – you would know.”

Riddle sighed, and slithered down from his chair somewhat reluctantly.  He cast a critical eye over Harry’s dishevelled appearance.

“What’s your budget, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Harry blinked.  In his excitement he had quite forgotten about money.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out six sickles, a knut, and a sherbert lemon wrapper.   

“Er…” said Harry, cursing himself for revealing his hand so early.  “I might have to go to Gringott’s...”

Riddle turned away, covering his mouth, but not before Harry caught the beginnings of a smile.

“We don’t usually take cash, anyway,” Riddle said, from behind his sleeve.  “Most of our customers have family accounts.  What’s your name?”

“Potter,” said Harry, deciding to chance it.

Riddle lowered his sleeve a fraction and peered at him.

“Potter…? _Fleamont_?  I thought I recognised you.  My, you’ve changed a bit since school!  In the beauty business now, I heard…” He glanced at Harry’s hair with a slight sneer.  “I’m surprised you don’t use your own potions…”

“Oh!  I’m not – no – I’m not Fleamont.  He’s my – cousin,” Harry said, just managing to stop himself saying ‘grandfather’.  “I’m _Harry_ Potter.”

“Ah,” said Riddle, and a brief shadow flickered across his handsome features.  “Harry…” he repeated, rather slowly, like someone trying to remember some long-forgotten piece of information.

“You knew Fleamont?” Harry’s stomach was starting to churn in a very strange way.  He’d never even thought of the possibility of his grandfather and Voldemort co-existing, never mind being at school together.

“Not very well, admittedly,” said Riddle.  “He was quite a few years above me.  He locked me in the girls’ lavatory when I was in first year.”

“Oh,” said Harry.  “Sorry about that.”

“It’s all right,” said Riddle.  “It turned out to be… something of a blessing, actually.  A surprising person, Fleamont.  It’s funny, he never struck me as much of a potioneer.  He was always a bit slapdash, rough-and-ready, if you know what I mean.”

“Well,” said Harry, pointedly.  “Being good at school isn’t always the best indicator of success out in the real world.”

Riddle’s cheeks reddened - Harry had evidently touched a nerve.  Tom Riddle, who had been head boy and always top of his class, had surprised everybody by going to work in a shop.

“Indeed,” he said.  The chatty tone of voice was suddenly replaced by ice.  “Wait here, then, and I shall see if we have anything to suit you.”  He disappeared behind one of the shelves.

Harry felt an inexplicable twinge of guilt for having offended Riddle, which was laughable when he thought about all that the boy had done, and would do, to hurt others.  He thought again about his grandfather, Fleamont, and how it might be just to see him, and talk to him, even just for five minutes…

Riddle returned with a rather battered-looking old basin that seemed to be made out of tin.  A quantity of dirty-looking liquid sloshed around in the bottom.

“This looks about right for you,” he said, with a deadpan expression.

“Ha,” said Harry, drily.  He examined the pensieve.  “Can I try it first?”

Riddle shrugged.  “Be my guest.”

Harry paused, fingering the dull edge of the basin.  If he left now, he may never have the chance to see his grandfather again…  But Dumbledore’s words, spoken to him during his very first year at Hogwarts, echoed in his mind: It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live… And that same, Dumbledore, Harry reminded himself, was now trying to kill him.  If anything, surely it was wisest to see if he could get back to his own time, before formulating any plan. 

Bracing himself once more, he plunged head-first into the pensieve.


	3. A Friend in Need

 “Aren’t you supposed to put something in, first?  A memory, maybe?” said Riddle, smirking as Harry emerged again from the sludgy water, gasping and wet.

“Piss off,” said Harry, embarrassed by this first failure.  “I know what I’m doing.”

“Obviously,” said Riddle.

So, Plan A hadn’t worked.  Harry wondered what would happen if he did try to use a memory – could that work?  A pensieve within a pensieve?  There was only one way to find out.

He closed his eyes, and thought back to yesterday morning, waking up in the little flat he now shared with Ginny near Shepherd’s Bush.  Ginny had been reading the _Daily Prophet_ and laughing about something… what was it?  Something Rita Skeeter had written, maybe… Ugh, how he hated that woman.

No, Harry – concentrate, he thought to himself, shaking his head and squeezing his eyes tighter.  He’d been eating scrambled eggs on toast, and the Weird Sisters were playing on the radio…

Slowly, he raised his wand to his temple and began to extract a silver thread.  Gingerly, he lowered it into the pensieve and let it float there, making the sludgy water glow a bright silver.

Once more, Harry plunged into the basin.

The first thing he heard was the tinny sound of the radio.  He opened his eyes, and realised he was standing again in the narrow hallway of the apartment, full of Ginny’s quidditch memorabilia, her broomstick propped against the wall in a slightly haphazard manner.

Then he heard her voice drifting through from the kitchen, humming along with her favourite wizard rock band.  A smile spread across Harry’s face as he entered the room.  She was standing with her back to him, cooking something on the stove, her long red hair thrown back over her shoulders, swaying slightly to the music.

 _“Don’t need no potion to make me love you… Don’t need no serum to make me true… Don’t go drinking no polyjuice baby… I just want you to be you…_ oh, shit, not again.  Aguamenti!”

A small blue flame leapt up from the stove, which Ginny tried to combat with a jet of water from her wand.  Harry laughed, and Ginny span around, blushing.

“Harry!  How long have you been there?”

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, he felt a cold, icy sensation running through his entire body, as if he had just collided with Nearly Headless Nick.  

Only it wasn’t a ghost.  It was a scrawny individual with black, messy hair who had just walked right through him, laughing, to place his hands around Ginny’s waist.  To Harry’s indignation, she looked up, smiling, and kissed him.  It took him a while to recognise the back of his own head.

“Burnt again?” said the other Harry, with humour in his voice.  “I swear you’re part dragon, or something…”

They were the exact words he had said yesterday.  Ginny told him to shut up, but with a look in her eyes that told him she didn’t really mean it. He felt an inexplicable surge of jealousy towards himself, seeing Ginny smile at him in that way.

“Ginny,” he called out hoarsely.  It was futile.  The young lovers were completely oblivious to his presence.  He was simply watching his own memory.  A wave of despair swept over him.

“Ginny!” he called out again, louder this time.  “Ginny - please…!”

But already the memory was beginning to fade, the radio, the stove , the walls vanishing into thin wisps of smoke, and eventually the other Harry and Ginny were gone too, and he was back in Borgin and Burke’s, with dust in his eyes and a musty, dank smell clinging to his nostrils. 

He gripped the sides of the basin with white knuckles, partly to keep himself from falling, and partly to prevent himself crying out.  He was dizzy with fear and disappointment – he had been so sure that his plan would work – or, at least, he had hoped with such intensity that it would, as he had no idea what else he could do.

Riddle leered at him unkindly.  “Who’s Ginny?” he asked, with a predatory smile.

But Harry looked up with such an expression of forlorn despair that the smile wavered for a moment, and a brief flicker of something almost like pity could be seen for a moment in the dark eyes. 

Riddle felt his heart constrict within him, and suddenly he, too, was overwhelmed with an inexplicable feeling of deep sadness that was almost unbearable.  Alone – he was so alone… … But what was wrong with that?  He liked being alone, didn’t he?  Riddle shook his head, trying to rid it of the confusion of thoughts and emotions.

There was a sudden, loud commotion out at the front of the shop.  Harry and Riddle both turned their heads in the direction of the noise.  There was a sound like a shelf falling and several delicate items smashing at once, and a reedy wail from Caractacus Burke. 

“Gentlemen, please… Oh, goodness me… That Bartman jar was 300 years old… Good gracious…”

“Lookin’ for this bloke.  Name ’Arry Pottah,” barked a gruff voice.  “Minister’s orders.  ’As ‘ee been in ‘ere? Wisacre’s boy said ‘ee sent ‘im up ‘ere.”

“Oh, goodness gracious me… I wouldn’t know – eep!” Burke let out a frightened squeak, as if somebody had just caught him by the collar. “Come to think of it,” he simpered.  “There was a boy – with spectacles rather like that – in earlier – my assistant will know – please don’t hurt me, gentlemen, I am but a poor – a humble - ouch –“

There was the sound of a feeble body hitting the floorboards, and several booted feet trudging towards the back where Tom and Harry stood.  Harry looked at Tom.  There was barely any time.

“Hide me,” he said.  “Please.”

Tom stared back, unmoving.  He was weighing up his possibilities. The footsteps tramped closer.

“ _Please_ ,” said Harry again, but this time the word came out as a soft hiss, barely above a whisper.

Tom turned pale, gazing at Harry in disbelief.  Then he glanced at the door, through which at any moment Harry’s pursuers might burst.  Harry drew his wand in anticipation, thinking he might as well go out fighting, but at the same moment, Tom drew his and tapped Harry sharply on the head.

“ _Clanculo._ ”

Harry felt a cold sensation, as though a raw egg had just been cracked over his head.  He looked down at his own hands and watched as they disappeared from view before his very own eyes.

A fraction of a second later, the door to the back room was flung open, and several burly wizards in dark shirts forced their way into the room.  Some of them were wearing armbands emblazoned with a strange, bird-like symbol.  Tom stared at them, unfazed.

“What do you mean by barging in here like a herd of hippogriffs?”

The leader of the gang was a broad-shouldered, bearded man with a close-shaven head.  He looked around the room suspiciously. 

“We’s lookin’ for someone,” he snarled, shoving a piece of parchment into Tom’s face.  “Seen ‘im?”

Tom gazed coldly at the unflattering pencil-portrait with round horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of black hair. Harry stood stock still, not daring even to breathe too deeply.

“Yes,” Tom said, after a brief pause for consideration.  “He was in here earlier.”

“Well?  Where’d ‘ee go?”

“No idea,” said Tom, with the opaque, colourless expression Harry had often seen him use with Dumbledore.  “And quite frankly, I couldn’t care less.”

The thug’s eyes narrowed.  “I don’t appreciate your tone, boy.”  He suddenly grabbed Tom by the collar, and Harry saw Tom’s eyes widen – not with fear, but in disbelief.

“You better ‘ad start carin’,” the thug leader went on.  “This place ‘as enough black marks against its name – ah – ah – owww –! “ He suddenly doubled over in pain, clutching his fist and letting go of Tom, who staggered back a couple of steps.  The rest of the gang drew their wands, but hesitated, looking from their leader to Tom and back again.  Tom, his face suddenly the picture of surprised innocence, held up his hands to reveal that he held no wand.

“Boss?” said one of them, a gangly, red-haired freckled wizard that reminded Harry fleetingly of Ron. 

“Get ‘im, you idiots!” roared the boss, with tears in his tiny eyes.  “’Ee’s a bloody – wandless wonder isn’t ‘ee – arrgh!“

The wandless wonder did not, however, lose any time in retrieving his weapon in order to defend himself from the onslaught that now ensued.  His face was set in grim determination as he deflected one stun spell after another, only to then cast his own which sent six of his opponents flying at once.  Only the red-haired wizard managed to escape the blast, and stood momentarily immobilized in the midst of his fallen comrades, blinking in confusion.  Tom turned towards the ringleader with a look of disgust.

“Don’t you ever dare touch me again, you piece of filth,” he glowered, darkly.

As he was saying this, however, the redhead seemed to gain his composure and raised his wand in Tom’s direction with a scowl. 

What Harry did next was more the result of instinct than of any reasoned thought.  He drew his own wand and fired off his signature disarming spell, leaving his freckled opponent gaping at his empty hand in disbelief. 

Those of the gang that were still conscious also seemed deeply perturbed.

“How did he –“

“’Ees got eyes in the back of ‘is ‘ead!”

“Don’t be stupid, it was a ghost, I knew this place was haunted –“

But the readheaded wizard shook his head.  “No – it was – someone – a wizard.  I heard them say ‘expelliarmus’,” he said, gazing pointedly into the middle distance a few inches away from where Harry now stood.  “There’s someone else in here.”

“Impossible,” said his boss, suddenly, with dull decisiveness.  The redhead snapped his head round in surprise.

“But I’m sure –“

“Quiet Weasley.  We’ve wasted enough time here already,” said the boss, cutting over him gruffly.  “Let’s go.”

Harry’s heard leapt at the mention of the name shared by his girlfriend and best friend.  It was all he could do to keep himself from revealing his position further by crying out.  He looked at Tom, who appeared to be concentrating very hard on the floor.

The gang traipsed out of the shop amidst Weasley’s protestations, leaving a trail of valuable destruction in their wake.  An eery silence seemed to descend on the place after they had gone, broken only occasionally by the feeble groans emanating from Mr Burke in the other room.  Tom continued to stare at the floor, and Harry waited, not liking to interrupt.

After what seemed like an age, Tom’s air of intense concentration lifted, like a cloud passing over the moon, and he looked up, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.  Harry felt the disillusionment charm slowly lifting from his body.

Harry flashed Tom a tentative smile.

“Hey,” he said.  “Thanks for –“

His words trailed off as Tom lowered his hands, and Harry caught first sight of the twisted snarl and the blazing anger in the dark eyes.


	4. The Disorder of the Phoenix

“You complete and utter fool!” Tom spat.  “Why on earth did you cast that disarming spell?  I was doing you a favour – Merlin knows why – and now you’ve gone and dumped me in whatever dungpile you’ve been rolling in –“

“Weasley was about to attack you!” Harry retorted.  “I was trying to help you out –“

“I didn’t need any help!” Tom yelled, his face blotchy with rage.  “I had the situation under control!  I could have dispatched that gang of imbeciles with my eyes closed!  All you had to do was stand still and keep quiet, you bloody moron!”

“I’m not a moron!” cried Harry.  “I just don’t like to stand by and watch my friends get jinxed!”

“Friends?” echoed Tom, his voice suddenly quiet.  His expression was halfway between a mocking sneer and genuine bafflement.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Harry, despairingly.  “Just forget it.  I’m sorry I moved.  I’m sorry I tried to stop you from being hurt.  Merlin knows you don’t deserve it.”

Tom fell silent, and Harry, feeling suddenly exhausted, put his head into his hands and slumped down against one of the shelves.  Even though he couldn’t see him, he could still feel Tom’s eyes boring into him accusingly.

“How come you can speak Parseltongue?” Tom asked, after a while.

“I just can,” said Harry, sullenly.  “Same as you.”

“Well, no, because I’m –“ Tom began, and then seemed to think better of it.  Harry, having guessed what he was going to say, didn’t press him.  At this moment time, he couldn’t care less about Tom’s inflated sense of self-importance due to being the Heir of Slytherin.  Silence fell once again between them.

Harry thought about the gang of uniformed thugs and the young, red-headed wizard they had called Weasley.  Why would a member of such a well-meaning family join a gang like that?  Then again, not all of them were as decent as Ron and Ginny.  Just look at Percy.

 “What did you do?”

Tom’s priggish, nasal voice interrupted Harry’s train of thought once again.  He looked up, irritated.  Tom was leaning against his desk, absently polishing the tip of his wand.

“I mean, if I’m going to dragged off to Azkaban for your sake, it’s only common courtesy for you to let me know why Dumbledore’s henchmen are baying for your blood.”

“Azkaban?” echoed Harry sceptically.  “Because of me?  That’s rich.  If you did end up in prison, I’m sure it’d have more to do with, you know, being Lord Voldemort, than helping me out –“

Tom turned suddenly pale, and gripped his wand tightly.  “What did you say?  How do you know about that?” he asked, sharply.

Harry shrugged mysteriously.  “I know a lot of things about you, Tom Riddle.”

“Is that so?” Tom stuck his chin out defiantly, but Harry sensed he was nervous.  He could almost feel the other boy’s quickening heartbeat pulsating in his scar, and the tingling sensation was rapidly turning into the burning pain he remembered from before.  “What else do you know about me?”

Harry grinned mischievously.  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Tom’s eyes flashed with anger.  He drew his arm back a fraction, and Harry, with the lighting reflexes of one whose youth had been one continuous battle, noticed immediately.  His own hand flew to his wand just in time.

“ _Crucio_!” cried Tom, in that high, cold voice Harry knew so well.

“ _Expelliarmus_!” yelled Harry.

The beams of light from the two wands met in midair between them, and suddenly the room was filled with golden light.  Harry’s wand began to tremble and vibrate… the same way it had all those years ago in the graveyard, after the Triwizard Tournament.  He remembered.   Ghostly-grey figures began to emerge from the tip of Tom’s wand, beginning with the smoky images of the stupefied thugs.

“Wh – what’s going on?” said Tom, unable to disguise the tremor in his voice.  “What are you doing?”

“Winning,” said Harry, gripping his wand tighter and with more determination.  He had the upper hand.

More translucent apparitions emanated from Tom’s wand… jewellery, a spectral goblet, the likeness of a dead bird.  Harry thought he saw something similar to the Dark Mark rising through the air like smoke. 

They began to swirl around Tom’s face, obscuring his vision, forcing him to step back.  A strange, yet familiar sound rang in his ears, beautiful and frightening at the same time.  His wand began to tremble and shake violently; eventually, it fell from his hand and he was thrown backwards with an indignant cry.

Relief washed over Harry, followed by an almost euphoric sense of power. He stepped towards his adversary, who, to his credit, was already attempting to scramble to his feet and retrieve his wand, despite being visibly shaken.

“I’d leave it, if I were you,” said Harry. “It’s probably not going to be much use.”

Slowly, Tom raised his eyes towards Harry.  In them, Harry read a mixture of anger and apprehension, even something like admiration – but no abject fear.  Tom’s bravery and sense of superiority even in defeat had always been nonpareil.

“Who _are_ you?” Tom demanded, his voice cold and quietly defiant.

“I told you already - Harry Potter.  Here,” Harry said with a sigh, offering Tom his hand to help him up. 

Tom eyed it suspiciously, and didn’t take it. He rose to his feet unaided, if slightly inelegantly, and brushed off the seat of his trousers.

“What was that spell you did just now?  I’ve never seen it before.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Harry said.  “I – well – how about I tell you about it, if you help me out first?”

Tom looked indignant.  “I already have helped you!  I put the chief of the Order under the imperius curse, for Merlin’s sake…”

“The Order?"

“The Order of the Phoenix.  That's the incredibly pretentious name Dumbledore gives to that band of thugs he sends out.  Have you been living under a rock?”

Harry felt dizzy again.  This was all too weird.

“I think I need to lie down,” he said.

Tom looked hard at him, and for a moment, an expression of something like pity seemed to cross his features.

“Well,” he said, slowly.  “That can be arranged.  But then you really do owe me.”

Tom led Harry up a rickety staircase, which seemed to appear out of nowhere in a back corner of the room.  It led up to a tiny attic room with bare floorboards and no furniture aside from a grim iron bedstead adorned with a Slytherin scarf, an old wash-stand and mirror, and a trunk, of the kind in which students used to store their belongings at Hogwarts.  There was a single window high up in the eaves, and through it shone a lonely moonbeam, illuminating the dust in the air.  Harry thought he had never seen such a sad room, and he had lived in a cupboard under the stairs for a good chunk of his life.

“This is my room,” said Tom.  “I know it’s not much, but I’m saving for a trip to Albania.  You can sleep here, if you want, for now.”

Harry looked around the room, and then up at the moon through the little window.  It must have been pretty late by now.  He yawned.

“What about you?  Where will you sleep?”

“Oh,” said Tom, carelessly.  “I don’t really.  I drink wakefulness potions instead.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” mumbled Harry, sleepily, sitting on the bed.  The springs dug into his buttocks painfully.  “’s bad for you.”

“All right, mother,” said Tom, with a sideways smile.  Underneath his mocking expression, however, he was touched – it wasn’t often that somebody expressed concern for his welfare.

Harry sighed and eased himself back, resting his head against the rather lacklustre pillow.  The burning in his scar had almost completely disappeared; now, instead, he felt a strange, warm glow which wasn’t painful at all – it was in fact quite pleasant.  It was a small blessing when compared with all of the other strange and worrying things which had happened to him during the course of the day – but a blessing all the same, and he received it gratefully, falling asleep with the ghost of a smile on his lips.

Tom stood at the foot of the bed, chewing his lip and trying to make sense of the situation.  This boy was clearly a wizard of formidable ability, more likely than not with auror training, who claimed to know of his secret alter ego, Lord Voldemort.  Surely, that should have been Tom’s worst nightmare.  Yet… somehow… the boy was strangely endearing, and Tom felt he almost – almost - liked him.  It was extremely concerning.

He had made no overt threats, yet Tom had felt compelled to give in to his demands for assistance.  Could he be under the imperius curse?  He would not have thought it possible, but the boy had shown flashes of extraordinary power… He peered at himself in the spotted wash-stand mirror, searching for some telltale sign, but saw only his own, ordinary eyes gazing back at him, round and fearful. 

He looked back at the boy stretched out on his bed, and felt again that strange pull, as though there was some sort of connecting thread between them.  Even the name, _Harry Potter_ , seemed somehow familiar, although Tom was quite sure he had never met anybody by that name.  He came a little closer, and looked long and hard at the sleeping face. 

He felt an inexplicable sense of contentment, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, and hearing the small snoring sounds he made as he slept in his bed.  It was a feeling of peace, of wholeness, such as he had not felt in a long time.  The boy’s mouth was slightly open, and there was a spot of drool forming on one side.  He was also still wearing those stupid, round spectacles. Almost without thinking, Tom reached out and removed them, gently placing them on the trunk beside the bed.  Then he yawned, overcome with a sudden drowsiness despite all the potion he had drunk that day.  He sank down to his knees, and rested his head near to Harry’s on the bed.  It felt nice, this closeness… Before he had even realised what he was doing, Tom also fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, such as he had not experienced since he was sixteen years old, and his soul was still in once piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi... I have been doing some thinking and decided to change the name of Dumbledore's followers to the Order of the Phoenix because that is the name he himself came up with, and it actually fits much better with the story in general.


	5. The Sorcerer Seeks a Stone

He was only awakened the next day by Mr Burke banging the handle of a broom stick loudly against the floorboards of the bedroom.

“You lazy, good-for-nothing lump!” screeched Burke.  “Do you think I pay you to laze around in bed ‘til all hours!  We’ve got customers!”

Tom sat bolt upright.  He felt awful, and his muscles ached from sleeping in such an awkward position.  He blinked blearily, ran his fingers through his hair, and then sprang backwards in shock when he laid eyes on the strange boy sleeping in his bed.  He was more than halfway across the room when he remembered the events of the previous night and managed to compose himself.  He crept closer and shook Harry roughly by the shoulder.

“Hey, wake up, will you?” he hissed into Harry’s ear.  “You need to get out of here before Burke sees you.  Rest assured he’ll have no qualms about turning you in this time.”

Harry only groaned and turned over, pressing his face into the pillow.

“Just a couple more minutes, Ginny,” he muttered.

Tom frowned.  “I’m not – oh, never mind.  Do what you want.  You can get arrested for all I care.”  With that, he straightened himself up, splashed his face with water from the wash-basin and hurried downstairs.

He clattered through the inventory room and burst through the door to the shop floor, his most saccharine smile he could muster glued to his face.

“Good morning!  Welcome to Bor – “ he stopped short.  It felt as though his heart, which usually stayed in his chest where it belonged, had suddenly jumped into his throat, choking off his ability to speak. The cause of this was a tall, immaculate lilac-robed figure standing and smiling politely at him from amidst the dusty shelves: his old teacher, and recently appointed Minister for Magic, Albus Dumbledore.

“…gin and Burke’s,” finished Tom, in a much squeakier voice than he intended.

Dumbledore’s eyes crinkled from behind the half-moon spectacles.

“Good morning, Tom.  How is life in retail treating you?”

“Fine,” squeaked Tom.  He hadn’t seen Dumbledore since school, and there was something about the older wizard that still struck fear into his heart.  A certain steeliness in the kindly blue eyes, and a certain way of looking that made Tom feel positively transparent, as if everything he had ever done wrong was blazoned across his forehead in large print.

“I’m so glad,” said Dumbledore, pleasantly.  “You know, a couple of the teachers expressed surprise at your decision to come here, but not me…  You must love it here, surrounded by all this… paraphernalia.  You always were something of a collector.”

Tom forced a smile, but said nothing.  Dumbledore picked up an antique brass remembrall and began examining it absent-mindedly.

“I was sorry to hear, Tom, that you once again found yourself at the centre of a certain amount of unpleasantness last night,” Dumbledore continued, without changing his pleasant tone.  “Old habits die hard, do they not?”

“There was something of a misunderstanding,” said Tom, quietly.  “Nothing serious.”

“A certain number of – ah – unforgivable curses were used, I gather.”

“Were they?  I don’t recall…”

Dumbledore looked up at Tom and smiled again.  “Don’t you?  Well, no matter.  It was a misunderstanding, like you said.  As soon as my assistant mentioned where the fracas had taken place, and with whom, I immediately realised their mistake.  An intelligent boy like you would never think of harbouring enemies of the state.  Or harbouring anyone, for that matter.”

There was a thump overhead, and a rolling sound, rather like somebody falling out of bed.  Both wizards raised their eyes to the ceiling.

“What was that?” asked Dumbledore.

“I’m not sure,” said Tom, passively.  “Perhaps Mr Burke –“

“Mr Burke just stepped out for some fresh air on my suggestion,” said Dumbledore.  “He looked rather shaken after last night, and I thought that you might be able to assist me in his stead.”

“We’ve been having some trouble with boggarts,” Tom lied.  He quickly changed the subject.  “What can I assist you with?”

“I’m looking for something,” said Dumbledore, vaguely, going back to examining the remembrall.

“Oh?”

“A ring…”

“Well, we have a lot of rings…”

“Not just any ring,” Dumbledore interrupted.  “A specific ring.  An ancient ring, with a special design, like this.  Have you seen it?”

With a smoky trail from the tip of his wand, Dumbledore traced a triangle in the air, split it down the middle with a straight line, and finished it off with a small circle.  The symbol glittered there for a moment, then faded away, like a candle suddenly being blown out.  Tom’s eyes widened a fraction with recognition.

“That –“

“Yes, boy?” said Dumbledore, his pleasant expression suddenly melting into one of greed and desperation.  Tom noticed this, and decided to keep his own cards close to his chest.

“That – that’s Grindelwald’s sign, isn’t it?” he ventured, innocently.

Dumbledore made an impatient movement.  “It is a much older sign than that,” he snapped.  “Really, Tom, you never cease to disappoint - I had thought that perhaps… But no matter.  No matter.”

There was a heavy tread on the stair, and a voice called out unsteadily from the back of the shop.

“Tom?”

The icy fingers of panic gripped Tom’s heart, but he remained outwardly calm, slamming the door to the back of the shop shut, and locking it, with a deft flick of his wrist. He smiled at Dumbledore winningly.

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.

“It seems to be a rather friendly boggart you have here.  I’ve never heard of them calling one by one’s name before.”

“Yes, well.  I’m afraid of intimacy,” said Tom, perfectly earnestly.

Dumbledore blinked.  “I see.  Well, Tom, if you do come across anything like the ring which I have described to you… You will let me know, won’t you?”

“Of course, Minister.”

“Straight away.  It goes without saying that, coming directly from the Minister of Magic, this is a request of the utmost secrecy.”

“Of course, Minister.”

“I happen to know you are good at keeping secrets.  There will be a reward in it for you.”

“Thank you, Minister.”

Dumbledore fixed Tom with another of his penetrating stares and Tom gazed back vacantly, his mind decidedly blank.  With a final sigh of disappointment, Dumbledore placed the brass remembrall back on the shelf, turned on his heel and left the shop, his powder-lilac robes trailing elegantly behind him.  There was the tinkling of a small bell as the door opened and shut, and Tom breathed a sigh of relief.

***

On the other side of the door, Harry was feeling rather miserable.  He had half hoped, as he fell asleep the night before, that this would all turn out to be a weird dream, the product of one of Ginny’s more imaginative concoctions in the kitchen.  He had dreamt of Ginny last night, dreamt that he was back in their little flat and she was lying in the bed beside him.  It had been so vivid, he had felt the tickle of her feather-light breath on his cheek, and reaching out he could have sworn he touched her soft hair, and even grasped her warm hand in his… But he had awoken to find himself once more in that dire, sparsely furnished room, with a dusty Slytherin scarf hanging over his head.  He was still in the ugly, topsy-turvy world of the pensieve, where Dumbledore was trying to kill him and Voldemort was his only friend.

He was not sure why Tom had slammed the door in his face that morning, but he was sure there was a good reason, and did not protest.  There were probably wanted posters up of him in every shop window in Diagon Alley by now.  Some things never seemed to change, no matter what universe he was in. 

He sat at Tom’s desk, and at a loss for what to do, tried to read the large book that was open on it.  Unfortunately, it was in ancient runes, and the only thing Harry had ever learned to read in that language was the letter “B”, when he was helping Hermione with her O.W.L.s revision once.  He wished Hermione was with him now; she would surely have known what to do.  He then decided, with the rather feverish imagination of someone completely at sea, to count all the letter “B”s on the page to pass the time.

He had counted twelve when the door opened and Tom entered from the front of the shop.  He looked surprised to see Harry poring over the heavy tome.

“You read ancient runes?”

“Er, just the “B”s,” said Harry.

Tom laughed, and Harry felt another sudden surge of pleasant warmth in his scar.

“Useful,” said Tom.  His smile faded.  “Listen,” he said.  “I don’t think you can stay here much longer.  Dumbledore himself has been here this morning, he’s definitely onto something –“

 “Dumbledore was here?” gasped Harry, his eyes wide.  Cold dread began to mount in his stomach.  “Looking for me?”

“Well, not exactly.  He said he was after a ring, but –“

“A ring,” Harry repeated, half to himself.  “Of course – the stone!  He and Grindelwald are looking for the resurrection stone!”

“The resurrection _what_?”

“He said he already had the cloak – he must have got it from Fleamont somehow – and Grindelwald has the wand…  What year is it?” Harry garbled, feverishly.

“1945,” said Tom, with an expression of abject confusion.  “But I still don’t see –“

“Ssh,” said Harry, impatiently.  “Let me think.  1945.  That’s the year Dumbledore was supposed to have defeated Grindelwald.  But what if – what if they’re working together?  What if this is some sort of – alternative timeline where they stayed friends?!”

“Who?”

“Grindelwald and Dumbledore!” Harry cried, exasperatedly.  “Bloody hell, Tom, I thought you were supposed to be clever.  Try to keep up, will you?”

Tom reddened.  For a moment, he looked hurt, but then his face clouded with fury.  He moved closer to Harry with a dangerous, threatening expression.

“Now listen here, you,” he said in an ominious voice, jabbing Harry’s shoulder with his forefinger.  “I’ve had it just about up to here with your nonsense –“

“It’s not nonsense!” Harry protested.  “I heard them talking – that’s why Dumbledore is after me.”

Tom fixed Harry with a penetrating glare; their faces were inches apart.  Harry gazed back, his mind completely open, his green eyes imploring, inviting Tom in.  He tried to conjure into his mind the images of everything that had happened to him the day before, with Dumbledore, and the pensieve.  The two boys stared at each other for what seemed like an age.

Tom was the first to break eye contact.  He turned his head away, rubbing his temples.

“Impossible,” he said, quietly.  “It can’t have happened like that.  You’re confused – not thinking straight –“

“I know I’m confused!” said Harry.  “But I also know – I know what happened to me.  What you saw in my mind - it’s the truth.  Look!”

He lifted his hand to Tom’s cheek, in an attempt to force eye contact once again, but the contact with the other boy’s skin sent shockwaves up his arm, crackling into his scar, and caused him to clap his hand to his forehead in pain.  Tom also shuddered, and stepped back with a gasp of discomfort.

“What did you do that for?!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” said Harry, miserably.  “Do you think I like being shocked?  It always hurts somehow, when we touch …”

“What do you mean, ‘always’?  We only met yesterday.”

“Not exactly,” Harry said with a despondent sigh. “I knew you before… It’s a long story.”

Tom looked at Harry with a fearful, guarded expression, his arms crossed tightly across his chest in an unconscious effort to protect himself from the mysterious threat, and the pull he felt emanating from those green eyes.

“So… now what?”

“I have to find a way to get back,” said Harry.  “I’m sure Dumbledore will have the answer.  He’s the reason I got into this mess in the first place, after all…  Maybe if I use his pensieve…”

“You can certainly try,” said Tom.  “Although, one, I am pretty sure pensieves don’t work that like that, and two, what’s all this about Dumbledore and Grindelwald being in cahoots?  You can’t just glide in from nowhere and drop that kind of bombshell before disappearing again into the ether.  Dumbledore was supposed to stand up to that madman.  If what you say is true, and they are working together, it would be an unmitigated disaster – Grindelwald wants to tear down the Statute of Secrecy –“

“Then make sure Dumbledore doesn’t get his hands on that ring,” said Harry, sounding rather petulant.  “Quite frankly, I’m just interested in getting back home. I’ve already saved the wizarding world once, and I’m sorry if I’m not in a massive rush to do it all again in some sort of alternate universe.”

"Okay..." said Tom, slowly, with the sort of patronising tone one might use when conversing with someone who had a few screws loose.

There was an awkward silence.  Harry stared at Tom grimly, his arms folded, cheeks slightly pink from the exertion of trying to persuade Tom he was telling the truth.  He felt angry, confused, scared… not to mention really, really hungry.  He hadn’t eaten a bite since lunchtime the day before.

Tom’s gaze wandered around the room, as though he half expected somebody to jump out from behind one of the shelves and reveal it was all just a very elaborate practical joke.  It seemed like the sort of thing Avery or Rosier might find funny, but he strongly doubted their ability to pull such a complicated plot off so convincingly, given that they only shared a few brain cells between them…  His eyes landed again on the scrawny, mop-haired figure standing in front of him, saying such ridiculous things.  He could have been an escapee from St Mungo’s, for all Tom knew – and yet there was a compelling clarity in those amazing green eyes that made him believe he was telling the truth.  And then there was that instinctual attraction, the gut feeling that they were connected somehow… 

As if on cue, his gut decided to make its precise feelings known by letting out a long, low rumble.  Tom flushed with embarrassment, clutching at his stomach.  That sort of thing hardly ever happened to him - but Sod's law dictated that, of course, base bodily function _would_ decide to rear its ugly head at the precise moment he was talking to the only person he'd ever felt something like romantic interest for in his whole nineteen years.

“Excuse me…”

“No,” said Harry, quickly, almost gratefully.  “I mean – it’s all right – are you hungry?  Because I’m absolutely starving…”


	6. Hissy Fits

Tom decided to take Harry to the _Fons Immortalis_ , the swishest, fanciest new restaurant on Diagon Alley which specialised in eye-wateringly expensive, neverending ice cream sundaes.  Harry’s eyes were as large as quaffles as he devoured the menu, hungrily.  He was vaguely aware that the prices seemed to carry rather more 0’s than usual, but he was too ravenous to really care.

“Get whatever you want,” said Tom, with an air of carefree munificence.  He was out to impress this green-eyed vision, as well as to extract from him as much information as he could. He often found sugar, of all things, was particularly useful at lulling even the most cautious wizards into a false sense of wellbeing.

Whilst Harry was ploughing his way greedily through several pints of whipped-cream and popping candy, Tom pried him incessantly for information about the supposed other universe he had apparently come from.  Harry, although reluctant to open up at first, soon found himself falling quite naturally into a free and easy conversation.  It felt almost like talking to an old friend, and he ended up revealing a lot more about himself than he had originally intended – not just because Tom was incredibly persistent and persuasive (although he was definitely both of those things), but because he also felt a profound sense of catharsis in actually being able to talk to Lord Voldemort himself about everything they had been through together, without the added pressure of feeling he was only a few moments away from being murdered. 

Tom leaned forward, by turns amused, shocked and downright horrified by Harry's revelations, although he tried to maintain an air of cool indifference.  They gazed into each other's eyes, utterly wrapped in one another, to the exclusion of everything else going on around them.  Gradually, with the sun shining, the birds singing, and Tom smiling prettily at him from behind a mountain of Chantilly, Harry’s stories of his battles with his arch-nemesis started to sound less like the disturbing tales of persecution and woe they had been in reality, and more like a slightly unfortunate comedy of errors. 

A passerby, ignorant of the complicated histories of the two young men seated opposite each other, might have even said they were _flirting_.

 “So let me get this straight,” said Tom, swallowing a mouthful of his raspberry knickerbocker glory.  “In the future, I’m a dark wizard, and I killed you –“

“Sort of,” said Harry, munching on his chocolossus sundae and trying not to think about how much he was starting to enjoy spending time with Tom.  “But I came back – and before that,  _I_  killed  _you_ , but  _you_  came back –“

“Because of the horcruxes!  So they do really work… Genius, if I do say so myself –“

“Well, not really,” said Harry, grinning maliciously. “I still managed to find them all and destroy them.  A proper genius wouldn’t have been so careless –“

“You destroyed all seven?  Merlin, how  _irritating_  –“

“Irritating?  Irritating is thinking up a new plot to kill someone, every single year, for seven years.  Which is what you did, by the way.”

“Why?” asked Tom, suddenly serious.  “There must have been a reason.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” shrugged Harry.  “Something about a prophecy… It doesn’t really matter, now, does it?  That’s all in the past – or future – depending how you look at it.”

Tom sucked on his spoon thoughtfully.

“I suppose not.  But you know – it is rather encouraging, hearing all this.  Working in that shop is so soul-destroying at times – I mean, in the utterly useless sense – that sometimes I think I’ll never amount to anything, but you have given me some hope.”

Harry was surprised.  Lord Voldemort had always seemed so single-mindedly determined, it had never occurred to him that he might have had periods of self-doubt.  

The waiter brought them their bill on a small, silver tray and Harry reached over and peeked at it gingerly.  He grimaced.  It was rather a lot more than the six sickles, knut, and sherbert lemon wrapper he had in his pocket.

Tom caught Harry's dubious expression, and waved the bill out of his hand imperiously.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  He seemed exceedingly nonchalant for someone on a shop assistant’s meagre wages.  

Harry looked at him, incredulous.  “Are  _you_  going to pay?” 

Tom made a face as though Harry had just suggested something distasteful.  “Of course not,” he said.  He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a familiar mark on his forearm: a skull with a snake curling out of its mouth like a hideous, unnatural tongue.  He touched it with the tip of his wand and it darkened to a deep red. Harry stared at the Dark Mark, unpleasant memories bubbling up to the surface of his mind like scum.  It seemed strange for Tom to whip it out so casually in the middle of an ice cream parlour on Diagon Alley... He looked up at Tom, questioningly: nothing seemed to be happening. 

Tom drummed his fingertips on the table impatiently.

Eventually, a pasty-faced spotty wizard with square glasses and a file of papers apparated onto the pavement in front of them and ran over, gasping.

“What is it?!  What’s happened?”

“Lestrange,” said Tom, in a commanding tone.  “I almost had to wait.”

“I’ve still got fifteen minutes until I’m officially allowed to go on break,” panted Lestrange.  “My Dad’ll kill me if I lose this internship as well… What’s the emergency?”

Tom pushed the silver tray towards him, and Lestrange picked it up, squinting at the handwritten bill. 

“What’s this…? Oh… you mean, you want me to…?”

“Please,” said Tom, politely.

Lestrange raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I hardly think –“

Tom gave him a look, and he fell silent.

“Fine,” he grumbled, digging around in his pocket.  “Waiter – waiter – Merlin’s beard, I hate these sorts of places.  What are you doing here, anyway?  And who’s  _that_?”

“Harry Potter,” said Harry, extending his hand.  “Pleased to meet you.”

“How-do-you-do,” said Lestrange, giving Harry’s hand a cursory jiggle.  “It won’t last, you know.  He’s a complete bastard.  My advice is to get out while you still can.”

“Lestrange!”

Lestrange grinned.  “I’m only telling the truth!  Where are the others, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom, frowning.  “It’s a disappointing turn-out.  Nott did say that he would be taking notes at that Wizengamot session all week for his Magical Law diploma, and Avery’s failed his apparition apparition test for the umpteenth time so he’ll probably be late… But as for the others…”

“Well, here are Rosier and Dolohov now,” said Lestrange, pulling up a chair and laying his file down on the table.

Appearing across the street was a sandy-haired boy, around the same age as Harry and Tom, together with a slightly older, thickset wizard with elaborate mustachios and rather wet hair.

“Sorry I’m late,” said sandy-hair, apologetically.  “Family stuff – couldn’t get away –“

“I vas in the bath,” said the moustachioed one, with a heavy Russian accent.  “Zis better be good.”

Harry smiled to himself.  More than once, he had wondered what happened when Death Eaters received their master's call at inconvenient moments - now he knew.

“Ha!” said Lestrange, his tone prickly.  “It  _was_ good.  Luckily, the crisis has now been averted, gentlemen.  Lord Voldemort here just needed someone to stump up the cash for his date –“

“I’m not his date!” protested Harry, appalled.  “I have a girlfriend –“

“Whatever,” said Lestrange.  “The bottom line is, it’s sorted now – unless my Lord requires something else?”

“Actually,” said Tom, surprisingly calm despite the ribbing he was getting from Lestrange.  “There is something that has… come to my attention. Sit down, you two.  Lestrange, what’s this in your dossier?”

He singled out a page from amongst Lestrange’s papers with a long, pale finger.

“Hey – you can’t – that’s Ministry stuff –“ Lestrange protested, but Tom ignored him.

“Look, Harry,” he said, handing it across to him.  “It’s about your… relative.”

Harry stared at the page.  On it was a grainy photograph of a man a little older than Harry, sporting very similar horn-rimmed spectacles.  He ran his hand through his immaculately slick hair and grinned proudly out of the frame, reminding Harry fleetingly of his old Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart.  Still, there was undoubted family resemblance - it could have been his father, James, in old-style fancy dress.  Below the photograph were some sparse notes, including Fleamont’s age ( _25_ ), whereabouts ( _Godric’s Hollow_ ) and blood status ( _pure?_ ), as well as the word “suspect” scrawled in another, peculiarly elaborate, hand.

Harry reached out and traced the strangely familiar face with the tip of his finger. His heart leapt into his throat, and he felt, not without some embarrassment, the sharp prick of tears in the corners of his eyes.  He had never seen a picture of his grandfather before.

He glanced up to find Tom staring at him with a strange expression on his face – if it had been anybody else, Harry would have said they looked sympathetic.

“Are you all right?” he asked, gently.

“Yeah,” Harry lied, rubbing his eye with the back of his sleeve.  He turned to Lestrange.  “Why have you got this, anyway? What does it mean, ‘suspect’?”  

Lestrange sniffed and began polishing his spectacles.  “As if I should know.  Nobody tells me anything - I’m just the intern.  All I know is that I’ve been making copies of these things all morning.”

Rosier snatched the page from Harry’s hand.

“I remember him,” he said.  “The whole family are filthy blood-traitors.  He was in the  _Daily Prophet_ the other day saying that we should continue to appease Grindelwald, as the magical world could ‘reap great rewards from increased contact with muggles’ – read, ‘I want to make even more money by selling them my poxy hair potion.’ No wonder he’s a suspect.”

“Vile,” said Tom.  “You don’t share those opinions, do you, Harry?”

“Well, I – er,” Harry floundered, unsure of what to say.  “I don’t support Grindelwald, if that’s what you mean – I mean – if muggles knew about us, they’d constantly be wanting magical solutions to all their problems –“

“But it would be  _for the greater good_!” said Rosier, his tone dripping with sarcasm.  “Don’t be so heartless, Harry!  The muggles need our help!  And we can provide it, for a small fee…”

“Er –“ said Harry, again.  It was strange.  He’d never really questioned exactly why it was so bad for wizards to have contact with muggles.  “Actually, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad for the wizarding economy –“

“Ha!” said Lestrange.  “Typical Potter.  So  _nouveau_.  I can practically see the galleons in his eyes.”

“Enough,” said Tom.  “Harry is our guest and I won’t have you abusing him.  He said he isn’t for Grindelwald, and I believe him.  One can’t always help one’s –“ he hesitated. “- family connections.”

Dolohov, who had been silently smoking a cigarette during much of the preceding exchange, suddenly spoke.

“It is just as well,” he said, eyeing Harry darkly.  “If he were, I would kill him on the spot, for what his kind have done to my family – my country –“

“I said, enough!” said Tom, sharply.  Lestrange and Rosier exchanged nervous glances. 

Dolohov sighed, heavily.  “Apologies, my Lord.  But this culling of purebloods by Grindelwald has been a personal tragedy for me, and it angers me that there are those in our midst who would see it done here… I would fight to the death to defend our ancient traditions, our birthright.”

“I know, Dolohov,” said Tom, not unkindly.  “Lestrange – find out as much as you can regarding this Fleamont Potter business and keep me informed.  The rest of you can go.  We will meet again on Friday, as planned.”

Lestrange nodded, and one by one the three young Death Eaters disapparated, leaving Harry and Tom alone one again in the pavement café.  Tom looked down at his long-fingered hands, his face slightly turned away from Harry and shielded by his hair.

“Do you know the real reason why the Statute of Secrecy is in place?” he asked, quietly.  “Why we are forced to hide from muggles – to conceal our magic from them?”

Harry hesitated.  “I suppose I’ve never given it much thought.”

“ _If they knew about us, they would destroy us_ ,” hissed Tom, in parseltongue, lest they should be overheard by an overzealous blood-traitor.

Harry’s eyes widened.  “ _Wh – what do you mean_?”

“ _You grew up with muggles, didn’t you?  You know what they’re like!  And have you any idea how it would be, if you were to get up from this table and walk out through the doors of the Leaky Cauldron into the smog and the grime of muggle London?  Do you know about the curfew, the black-out, the air-raids?  Because I have, I do!  Death, death and destruction, everywhere… And did you see what they did in Japan?  Did you?  Wizards died, Harry – hundreds of them.  The Prophet didn’t report much, but I buy the muggle papers, I know!  Harry, we can’t let them anywhere near this world, our world…  Not through mudbloods, not through anyone... Grindelwald is mad if he thinks he can contain them..._ ”  Tom’s hands were balled into fists and there were spots of colour on his usually pale cheeks. 

Harry stared at him.  He had never thought about it that way. Still, Tom was being a tad dramatic.

“ _They’re not all bad – muggles, I mean,_ ” he ventured with a conciliatory tone.

Tom was incensed.  “ _Yes they are!  Name one decent muggle you’ve ever met_.”

For a few moments Harry was stumped.  “ _Er… well… my friend’s parents_ …  _they’re_  dentists…” (This last word was in English, as there is no equivalent word in Parseltongue.) “ _They always seemed pretty decent_ …”

Tom raised an eyebrow.  “ _Oh yeah? What are their names_?”

“ _Er… … um…_  Mr and Mrs Granger?”

“ _I see_ ,” said Tom.  “Mr and Mrs Granger.   _Sounds like you know them pretty well_.”

“ _That’s beside the point_!” said Harry.  “ _The bottom line is, it’s absurd to say all muggles are bad.  Some of them are – okay, at least.  And some of the worst people I have ever met have been wizards.  Like you, for example_!”

“ _Me_?”

Harry was unprepared for the surprise and hurt in Tom’s voice, and the sharp stab of guilt he felt as a result of offending him.  He began to stammer, confused.

“ _Well – I mean – not you, you – the other you - where I came from – you were pretty much the worst – ugh, I can’t believe I’m having to justify myself to you!”_

He tore at his hair in frustration, suddenly feeling ashamed at his feelings for Tom and the silly, facetious way he had been acting, all because of a pretty face.

 _“_ _You were a mass-murderer for god’s sake – you killed people – even when you were at school – your own family, even – you tortured other kids at your orphanage – you were just evil_!”

A stunned silence followed his outburst.  Tom stared at him, dumbfounded, his mouth slightly open in shock, as if it were the first time anybody had ever confronted him with the litany of his own sins.  It probably  _was_  the first time, Harry realised.

“ _I did – I did those things – for a reason_  –“

“ _A reason?!  A reason?!  What reason could you possibly have had_?”

People around them were starting to stare and whisper.  It isn’t every day that you hear a heated argument in Parseltongue, even in Diagon Alley.

“ _I –_ “

“ _And what about my parents?  My mum and dad – you didn’t have to kill them – you were after me - but you did!  Why?!  Why did you do that?!”_

“ _I don’t know, I –“_

“ _You ruined my whole life_!” Harry screamed.  “ _I try not to think about it – but when I – when I think about the life I could have had – which I lost – because of you – I just can’t – I can’t even look at you –_ “

Trembling, he lowered his head into his hands, massaging his temples roughly and pressing his palms against his eyes.  He didn’t want to cry – not here, not now. 

Tom seemed frozen on the spot, glued to his chair in amazement.  He was awash with the same strange, alien emotion he had felt in Borgin and Burke’s the day before, when Harry had looked at him with such sadness.  Then he felt a sudden, sharp pang in his chest that almost took his breath away.  He gasped, clutching at his chest in pain, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

Harry looked up, peeping at Tom through his fingers.

“Tom _–_ are you – are you all right?”

Tom nodded stiffly, unable to speak.

“You don’t look it,” said Harry.  “Look – I didn’t mean to – let’s just get you home, okay?”

He tried to help Tom up.  As they were struggling to their feet, Harry heard heavy footsteps on the cobbles behind them.  He turned to see a sweaty, red-faced wizard with thick blond hair jogging up the alley towards them.

“Hey – hi – sorry I’m late – my Lord,” he panted, gasping for air after every few words.  “I’m Avery – how do you do – ran all the way here - did I - miss much?”


	7. A slightly raunchy chapter (sorry)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have been warned. If you don't like a little bit of smut you might want to read this chapter with your eyes closed.

Tom insisted he was well enough to work that afternoon, and threw himself as hard as he could into tending to the shop and visiting clients.  Harry lay on the rickety bed upstairs, still trying to make sense of the situation he was in and to figure out his escape.  He could always just try breaking into the Ministry and fighting his way to the pensieve – but what if it then didn’t work? He’d be sent to Azkaban for sure.  He wondered how well-disposed Lestrange might be to let him have some of his hair for some polyjuice potion just to get inside undetected.

At the back of his mind, he felt a vague sense of dread on behalf of the grandfather he had never met, who had been deemed, rather ominously, a “suspect.”  He felt bad to run away without helping or at least warning him in some way.  His own parents had made the ultimate sacrifice for him… could he at least not spare some time to help out another Potter in need?

And then there was Tom… Tom set his head spinning.  Harry had already seen, especially in his interactions with the proto-Death Eaters, flashes of the cold, merciless Lord Voldemort.  Yet this Tom was also palpably human, as well: uncertain and emotional at times, he had even shown kindness to Harry more than once in the past couple of days.  He seemed to like Harry, for some reason – and Harry, in spite of himself, liked him back.  Plus, the physical attraction, although Harry tried hard to ignore it, was stronger than ever.

He was sorry for how much his outburst at the café earlier had seemed to hurt Tom.  On the other hand, he was glad he had given voice to some of the thoughts and feelings which had been whirling through his mind for almost a decade.  Some things just felt better once they were out in the open.

At around half-past five, there was a gentle knock on the door, and Tom put his head in.  He looked tired, and much less handsome than usual.  He had dark circles under his eyes, and his skin had taken on a slightly grey tinge.

“Hello,” he said, rather sheepishly.

Harry raised himself up on his elbow.

“You look awful.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it,” said Harry.  “You should really lie down.  Here, have the bed.”

He got up, and took Tom’s arm by the sleeve.  It felt thin and bony under the robes, and Harry felt a sudden rush of protectiveness towards him. 

“How do you let yourself get to this state?” he asked, disbelieving.  “I bet that ice-cream was the only thing you’ve eaten in days.”

Tom shrugged.  Harry led him towards the bed, where they both sat down.  Harry did not let go of Tom’s arm, and Tom did not try to remove it from his grip.

“About what you said earlier –“

“I’m sorry –“ Harry began.

“No,” said Tom.  “Don’t be stupid.  I just wanted to know how - how you knew all those things about me… about my life…”

“I told you,” Harry said.  “I knew you –“

“But those things about the orphanage… about my – my family… how could you possibly have known those things?  I’ve never told anyone about that.  I can’t imagine that I ever would.”

Harry swallowed.  How could he possibly explain?

“Well – I – in order to defeat you – I kind of had to study you… I looked at all sorts of memories… that other people had about you… I was able to put a story together…”

He deliberately left out any mention of Dumbledore.  That was a rather sensitive subject at the moment.

“I also found your diary… the one you created when you were sixteen…”

Tom smiled faintly.  “Oh?”

“It tried to kill me.”

Tom passed a hand over his eyes.  “Oh, Merlin.  You must really hate me by now,” he said, quietly.

“No,” said Harry, quickly.  “I don’t.”

Tom turned towards him, a look of disbelief on his tired face.  “How could that possibly be true, after everything you've told me I did to you?”

 _Because I knew it wasn’t your fault you were incapable of love, or friendship,_ Harry thought, but decided against saying it out loud.  It seemed a little harsh.

Instead he shrugged. “You always just seemed – kind of – I don’t know.  Lonely? And definitely know how that feels.  I mean, I’m pretty sure I would have turned psycho after one more year with the Dursleys…”

Tom snorted. “What were they called again?  Petunia…”

“And Vernon.  Yeah.  I know.  He sold drills for a living…”

“Oh, God.”

“I almost wish you could meet him.”

“I would love to…”

They grinned at each other, and Harry felt the warmth building in his scar again, and his stomach did an odd flip.  Even in his current weakened state, Tom was bloody gorgeous.  Harry’s mind was suddenly filled with a flood of inappropriate thoughts.  He stared at Tom’s soft, red lips.  Or perhaps they weren’t so inappropriate after all…

Tom could feel Harry's fingers gripping his arm, hot, almost burning through the sleeve of his robes.  Being close to Harry was excruciatingly delicious. He felt happy for the sense of completeness it gave him; sad because Harry was so… good (there was no other word for it), and he, well, wasn't (understatement of the century). Every time he looked too long into those green eyes he felt a kind of creeping, sickening pain take hold of his insides; yet he didn't want to look away. He wanted to look, and look, and look, until there was nothing left of either of them, just two souls, floating in a sea of endless green. 

Absurd, really.

His eyes travelled over Harry’s face, coming to rest on his scar.

“I gave that to you,” he said, quietly.

“Yeah,” said Harry, his voice husky with desire.

Slowly, cautiously, Tom lifted up a pale hand and brushed against the scar with his fingertips.  An electric thrill of pleasure coursed through Harry’s body, concentrating in his dick, which immediately began to harden.  He let out an involuntary moan.

“How does that feel?” asked Tom, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Good,” sighed Harry.  “Do it again.”

He felt Tom’s fingers caress his scar again, slightly more confident this time.  The waves of pleasure began to build in his body, becoming stronger with every touch of the slender, white hand.  Harry’s dick was making a tent in his robes, a dark spot of precum appearing where the head of his member strained against the fabric.  Harry moaned again.

Tom was still staring at Harry’s scar as he rubbed it, a look of concentration on his face.

“It’s so strange,” he said, after a while.  “Why does it do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Harry, gruffly, grabbing Tom’s face and pulling it towards him, causing him to lose his balance slightly.  “And I don’t really care,” he added.  He pressed his lips against Tom’s in a rough kiss, and his scar nearly exploded with pleasure.  He couldn’t see anything anymore; it was as if someone was shining an extraordinarily bright, white light in his eyes.

Tom made a brief, muffled noise of protest before acquiescing to the kiss and returning it hungrily.  It was something of a relief, to finally realise the conflicting emotions he had been feeling for the past couple of days were merely the result of intense desire, and nothing more.  Still, he had had no idea a kiss could be so all-consuming – he couldn’t see, and he felt as if the very essence of himself were leaving his body, and flowing into Harry’s and, Harry’s into his, and it was no longer possible to tell who was who, and there, in the distance, he could hear something beautiful, something heart-breaking and familiar, the same music he heard when his and Harry’s wands had connected, a kind of song…

“Phoenix song,” he gasped, pulling away from Harry’s lips for a moment.

“Mmm?” said Harry, in a pleasure-induced daze.

“It’s a phoenix song… like when our wands connected… do you hear it?”

Harry pulled him close again and smiled.  “Oh yeah.”

“Why do you think –“

“Ssssh,” said Harry.

***

Harry awoke later in the evening, as the single moonbeam had decided to shine through the tiny attic window, directly onto his face.  He was surprised, and then delighted, to see Tom sleeping so soundly and contentedly in his arms, his face turned away and one hand tucked under his cheek.  He looked so much younger with his eyes closed, and more innocent, the windows into his damaged soul being temporarily shut. He thought back with relish to a few hours previously, when Tom’s touch had brought him to the most intense orgasm of his life - he was still feeling weak, and not quite connected with his own body.  Tom certainly had not been the masterful, commanding lover of Harry’s youthful imagination; he had been hesitant, his fingers fumbling slightly, his mouth much less experienced than Harry’s.  Yet it had been enough – more than enough. 

Harry thought with a pang of guilt about Ginny.  Less than two days in another dimension, and he had already jumped into bed with someone else – not just any someone else, of course, but he wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse.  He had never been entirely open with Ginny about his attraction to other men, but she probably would have thought it weird that they’d both had a more-than-slightly inappropriate crush on the teenage Lord Voldemort.  Plus, it wasn’t as though he was unattracted to women… there had been Cho, as well, before Ginny… although he had never been quite able to fully separate their brief romance from their mutual feelings for Cedric… just as, in a way, his love for Ginny was bound up with everything the Weasleys represented to him.  Being close to Ginny, he was close to her family – part of her family, even… and he wasn’t alone anymore.

He traced an absent-minded finger up and down the ridges of Tom’s spine, wondering if he had ever felt anything like that for the Blacks or the Lestranges.  Harry thought of the Lestrange he had met that day, with his square glasses and uppity manner.  Did he and Tom even like each other?  Surely they must have done…

Tom stirred. “What are you doing?” he muttered, sleepily.

“I don’t know,” said Harry, stopping. “Sorry.”

Tom smiled faintly, his eyes still closed.  “I don’t mind…”

“Oh.  Okay.” Harry resumed his dorsal exploration.  “Tom…”

“Hmm…?”

“Do you think Lestrange would let me pretend to be him to break into the Ministry?”

Tom paused for thought.  “He will if I tell him to.”

“And will you?”

“…Maybe.”

Harry smiled, and snuggled closer to Tom in the bed.  His hair smelled vaguely of the pomade he used when he wanted to look smart for clients. It was sweet and faintly flowery, and Harry liked it.

“Harry…” said Tom, faintly.

“Yeah?”

“You still owe me, by the way… For helping you. Don’t think I’m letting you off just because you sucked my cock.”

Harry grinned against Tom’s neck.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from the ruthless Lord Voldemort,” he said.

“Good,” said Tom.


	8. Harry Potter on the Deathly Hallows

“So,” said Tom.  He and Harry were sitting either side of his desk in the inventory room, each of their wands laid out in front of them.  “Explain.”

“Our wand cores came from the same phoenix, so they refuse to attack each other,” said Harry.  “Next!”

“Wait, what?” said Tom, his eyes widening in disbelief.  “You mean – that wasn’t even your own spell?  You git!  I thought you were actually talented, when in reality you’re nothing special!”

Harry wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “That’s not what you were saying last night…”

“I mean, as a wizard,” said Tom, reddening slightly.  “Right.  So – tell me more about that Prophecy you mentioned, yesterday.”

Harry hesitated.  “Er – I’m not sure – “

“Come on,” said Tom, leaning forward eagerly.  “If I was out to get you in the future it must have been for _something_.  I must know.  Tell me.”

Harry sighed.  Tom was annoying when he wanted something.  It wasn’t for nothing he had managed to twist Slughorn’s arm over the horcruxes, or wear down the Grey Lady on Ravenclaw’s diadem.

“It was something about…you marking me as your equal… me having the power to destroy you… and us both having to kill each other, otherwise neither of us would survive… or something… Quite frankly, it didn’t make much sense, which isn’t surprising given that it came from Professor Trelawney…”

Tom sat back again, pensive.  “You have the power to destroy me…?  How?”

Harry shrugged, feeling oddly embarrassed about it now.  “Love, or something, I don’t know,” he mumbled.

 “ _Love?_   Who told you that?”  Tom looked disgusted. 

“Dumbledore…”

Tom snorted.  “What would someone like him know about love?  He’s never been in it.  He doesn’t even have any friends,” he said, dismissively.

“Funny, he used to say the same thing about you,” Harry retorted. 

Tom glared at him.  “Well, he was wrong, then, wasn’t he?”

 “Was he?”

“Well – yes!  I have lots of friends,” Tom said, defensively.  “You’ve even met them!”

“Yes, I know, but –“

“But what?”

“Are they really – really your friends?”

“Yes!” said Tom, emphatically.

“They act more like your servants,” said Harry, echoing Dumbledore’s own words, accusingly.  “I’ve seen how you treat them.”

Tom rolled his eyes.  “Oh, who cares.  At the end of the day, we have fun together, and we stick up for each other, and that’s what counts.  Who does Dumbledore ever have fun with, apart from – apparently – Gellert Grindelwald?  Or other people he thinks might prove useful to him?”

Harry thought about it.  “Er –“

“Yes, Harry.  That’s right.  Nobody.”  Tom’s handsome features were twisted into a sour expression.  “You know – I even – I used to wish that I could be like that.  But I’m not.  I feel things.  I get involved with people.  I make mistakes.  Unfortunately.”

Harry stared at him.  In a way, it was true.  Dumbledore had always been a lonely figure, kind at times, but then suddenly, unexpectedly distant… He had never revealed his true intentions to Harry, not until the very end… and even then, Harry wasn’t sure if that had actually happened, or it had just been a dream… Voldemort, on the other hand, was rarely alone, often acting in concert with his Death Eaters, or through them.  Even if he often showed them scant little respect, he had always seemed to need people around him, to know that they were on his side.

“So… what is this resurrection stone, he’s after, then?” asked Tom, intruding into Harry’s reverie.

“It’s part of a trio of ancient magical implements – the Deathly Hallows – that, when united supposedly make the bearer ‘Master of Death,’” explained Harry.  He felt like Hermione.  “The stone has the power to bring souls back from the other side, and is currently embedded in a ring, last seen, I believe, in the possession of one Morfin Gaunt, before its very mysterious disappearance some years ago –“

“All right, all right,” said Tom, waving his hand.  “And the other two Hallows are –“

“The Elder Wand, and the Cloak of Invisibility.”

“And you think Grindelwald has the wand.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“And Fleabag - I mean - Fleamont Potter had the cloak, but –“

“Now Dumbledore has it,” Harry concluded.

Tom sat back in his chair with a thoughtful frown.  “And you believe, once they get the stone, they will join forces, and implement some sort of revolution.”

“It’s a possibility,” said Harry, earnestly.  “I mean, it was only five minutes of conversation I overheard, but that’s what they seemed to be saying… I don’t know, though.  Maybe it’s all part of Dumbledore’s plan to bring Grindelwald down.”

“I doubt it,” said Tom, darkly.  “Dumbledore is a notorious muggle-lover, I bet he’s all over dismantling the Statute of Secrecy –“

“He might not be!” protested Harry, weakly.  “I’ve been thinking… I might have misunderstood.  I mean, in my – my world, he did defeat Grindelwald in the end, even though he always respected muggles well enough.  What if this is all part of his plan?”

Tom raised an eyebrow and seemed about to formulate a sarcastic response when he suddenly clapped his hand to his left forearm in pain.  Harry blinked, startled;  Tom just looked annoyed. 

“Excuse me, Harry,” he said, drawing his arm close to his lips with a frown.   “What is it, Lestrange?” he hissed.

Harry heard an odd, muffled voice coming from inside Tom’s sleeve.  Harry could not make out any words - it sounded to him as though somebody was speaking down a bad line, through a telephone on the other side of the room.

“Can’t it wait until Friday?” said Tom, irritably.

The muffled voice became more agitated.

“All right, all right,” said Tom, at last.  “Come over.”

A few seconds later, there was a cracking sound and Lestrange apparated in front of them, looking especially flustered.  He dumped a pile of parchment on the desk in front of Tom.

“It’s not just Fleabag,” he stammered, practically trembling with excitement.  “It’s all of us – all of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, except Weasley, of course… Although he’ll be out too, no doubt, if he says the wrong thing… It’s finally happening, just like Dolohov said…  A cull… The mudbloods are taking over… I’ve been fired, by the way… but not before I made copies… Avery’s been arrested… something about possessing contraband cauldrons… It’s a trumped-up charge if ever I heard one…”

“Lestrange,” said Tom, sternly.  “Slow down.  You’re babbling.  What’s this about Avery?”

“Arrested!” shrieked Lestrange, growing hysterical.  “Azkaban!  Locked up! Thrown away the key!  Because of a cauldron that’s been in the family for centuries - and Potter, his so-called friend, because of something about a cloak – hello, Harry, by the way, how have you been? - he’s coming for all of the purebloods... We’re next, I’m sure of it – my Lord, what do we do…?”

He looked pleadingly at Tom.  Tom looked down, avoiding his gaze, studying the various pieces of parchment nervously.  Each document had a grainy photograph clipped to it, similar to the one Harry had seen of Fleamont, and the word “suspect” scrawled across them in large letters.  Harry recognised a lot of the names – mostly as Slytherins and Death Eaters.

“I – I’m not sure…” said Tom, quietly. 

Lestrange looked distraught.  “What do you mean?  You have to be sure!  You’re – you’re the Heir of Slytherin!  Defender of purebloods!  You are Lord Voldemort –“

“I’ve told you, that’s just a silly anagram,” said Tom, rather miserably.  “It doesn’t mean anything…”

“Yes it does!” cried Lestrange.  He turned to Harry.  “Harry – I’m sure he listens to you - talk some sense into him, will you?  Did you know that he’s the real, live heir of Salazar Slytherin?  You should see the secret-chamber-thingy at school…”

“Yeah, I have, thanks,” said Harry.  Once again, he felt confused, and slightly sick.  “Do you know what’s happened to my – to Fleamont?  What did they say, about the cloak?”

“I just told you - he’s been sent to the big house!  The greybar hotel!  The clink, the cooler, the pen!  In other words, Azkaban!  It’s not good, Harry.   As for the cloak, all I know is that it was Ministry property, and he apparently stole it – although why someone as filthy rich as him would have to steal a poxy cloak is beyond –“

“That’s nonsense,” Harry said, indignantly.  “The cloak was his, anyway!”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Lestrange.  “That’s why we need Voldemort to release the Basilisk and –“

“Release the Basilisk?” said Tom, regaining some of his usual haughty disdain.  “At the Ministry?  And how do you think I would get her through central London?  The Metropolitan line?”

“Yes?  Why not?” said Lestrange, apparently unaware of Tom’s sarcasm.  It was unlikely he’d ever used the London Underground himself.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m sure you’ll think of something… you always do.”

Tom sighed and waved his hand resignedly.  “All right, Lestrange.  Leave it with me.  Inform the others of your findings, calmly, if at all possible.  I will be in touch once I have decided upon an appropriate course of action.”

“Hurrah!” said Lestrange, throwing his arms around Tom’s neck and hugging him tightly, even as Tom stiffened and tried to push him away. “I knew you would come through.  I’ll wait to hear from you.  Only, please don’t leave it too long, my Lord - things are moving incredibly quickly.  I love you.  ‘Bye.”

He disappeared with a sharp crack.

A moment later, he reappeared with another crack.

“I don’t know why I said that,” he said, apologetically.

“It’s all right,” said Tom.  “You were nervous.  Understandable.”

“Still weird,” said Lestrange.  “Anyway.  Sorry about that.”

He disapparated again.

Harry looked at Tom, who sat rubbing his temples, suddenly looking very tired.  Unfortunately, he seemed to have been right about Dumbledore.

“There goes my plan to break into the Ministry,” said Harry, sadly.  “Not that I’m planning to leave any time soon, now.  I don’t care about blood purity, mind - but I have to rescue Fleamont. I can’t just leave my own grandfather to get his soul sucked out in Azkaban, even if it is in another dimension.”

Tom glanced up at him, smiling wryly.  “Commendably heroic of you, Harry.  But if Dumbledore finds out…”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Harry, with determination.  “First of all, we should go and get the stone, to make sure he doesn’t get his hands on it.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Tom, assuming a rather arrogant expression. “It’s in a safe place.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Harry, darkly.  “He managed to figure out where it was once before, I’m sure he can do it again.”


	9. Half-Blood Prince (a sad chapter)

Little Hangleton was a serenely picturesque village in the sunshine, nestled as it was in the unspoilt Yorkshire dales; even the church and its little graveyard seemed quaint and almost chocolate-box worthy, free from the macabre shadows which had haunted it on Harry’s last visit.  A soft chanting emanated from the half-open doorway.

_Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam… et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam…_

“Listen,” said Harry, grabbing Tom’s elbow as they passed by.  “The choir is practising.”

_Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea et a peccato meo munda me..._

“Mm,” said Tom, distractedly.  He didn’t seem in the mood to take in the scenery.

They wandered along the tiny high street (where Harry bought some liquorice allsorts), and turned down a long lane, until the houses alongside grew sparser, and the road turned into a dirt track, eventually leading to a wooded thicket.  They were almost on top of it before Harry noticed the rotted wooden door, half-hidden amongst the trees, adorned with the dried-out, scaly remains of some long-dead reptile.  He glanced at Tom.  His face was pale, and a tense muscle twitched in his jaw.  High above them, on a not-too-distant hill, loomed the Riddle manor, already falling into disrepair.

“After you,” said Harry, gently.

Tom stepped forward, and pushed the door, which yielded, creaking under his fingers.  A putrid smell greeted their nostrils, and Tom covered his face with his sleeve.

“I forgot about the smell,” he said, his voice muffled.  “It’s even worse now.  Lord knows what they were keeping in here…”

Harry followed close behind him, a supportive hand against the small of his back.  He could feel Tom’s heart thudding through his robes, and he felt his own stomach twisting with nerves.  Worse than the smell, there was a horrible feeling in the air, a residue of the years of pain, sadness, and anger that had played themselves out in that little shack.  Instinctively, he snaked his arm around Tom’s waist, pulling him closer, as though it wasn’t already too late to protect him from all that unhappiness, but Tom pushed him away.

“I’m all right,” he said, irritably.  “Come on.  Let’s get this over with.”

He strode forward, and knelt down in a corner of the hovel that might once have been a kitchen of sorts, pulling up the floorboards.  Beneath them lay a golden box, conspicuous for its beauty amidst all the filth.  Tom pulled it out and examined it, slowly, reverently, before sitting back on his heels.

“There,” he said, matter-of-factly.  “Let’s go.”

Harry held out his hand.  “Can I see it?”

Tom narrowed his eyes and brought the box closer to his chest, suspiciously.  “What for?”

Harry blinked, slightly surprised at Tom’s reaction. “I just want to check everything is as it should be...”

“Well, no, you can’t,” Tom snapped.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s mine!” he snarled, suddenly angry.  “And I don’t want you looking at it – with your – your _eyes_.” 

“Why not?” Harry said again, insistently, moving closer.

“I just don’t!”

A throbbing pain began to build in Harry’s scar, but he fought through it; it was nothing he hadn’t felt before.  The pain was definitely the easiest thing to handle.

“Are you afraid of what I’ll see?”

“No, I just –“

“A part of yourself that you’ve hidden away – that you’re ashamed of?”

“I’m not ashamed,” said Tom, defiantly.  “I’m proud – proud of what I did.  And I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

There were only inches between them now.  Harry stopped his advance, his arms dropping to his sides, deflated.  “Really?” he said, gazing at Tom in disappointment.

Tom nodded resolutely, hugging the box to his chest tightly, but Harry detected a flash of fear in his eyes.

“Why?”

“Because – because –…” 

Harry closed the gap between them, grasping the box in his hands together with Tom’s trembling fingers.  The pain in his scar was blinding now; he couldn’t see anything now, except the two black pools of Tom’s eyes in front of him, growing larger and more blurred, until the darkness completely surrounded him… and then somebody was saying something, in Parseltongue, but it wasn’t Tom, but a different voice… angry, and shouting…

 _“_ _It’s over, innit… It’s over…”_

 _“No, it isn’t,”_ said Harry, in a cold voice, but his mind was a mess, a jumble of emotions, he felt like he was going to be sick –

_“IT IS!  I don’ want to hear another word about that dirty little slut – she could be dead for all I care!  Matter’ fact I hope she is –“_

Harry’s hand flew to his wand, and before he knew what he was doing, a barrage of venomous curses he hardly knew were falling from his lips, his wand pointing in the darkness at the silhouette of a ragged man, hunched over the table… The figure screamed in pain, then slumped over, a dagger falling from his hand and clattering to the floor… and Harry was fumbling through the darkness of the shack, his feet crunching over the remains of a smashed lamp which he had dropped in that dread moment of cold realisation… _it couldn’t be… please, anything but that…_   He butted his shoulder against the door, finally feeling the relief of the fresh summer air against his face, cold where it met the wetness on his cheeks.  He fell to his knees, his head in his hands, and screamed, a long, wild, scream of rage…

He lay face-forward in the dirt and weeds for what seemed like hours, replaying the man’s words over and over in his head… _I thought you was that Muggle… You look mighty like that Muggle… That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to… That Muggle… That Muggle…_ He had stopped screaming, and was sobbing now, quietly.  All these years, he thought his father had been dead… But the truth was so much worse.  He thought of his pathetic, weak, dishonoured mother, a descendant of the great Salazar Slytherin himself, driven to an early grave by the cruelty and ignorance of _That Muggle_ … And he, Tom, was the spawn of the unnatural union… He looked at his hands, grubby with the filth of the place, and hated them.

He lifted his head, slowly, gazing at the manor house up ahead.  There were bright, warm lights in the large windows; faint laughter, and a distant strain of music floated towards him on the warm, summer breeze.  He thought fleetingly of how it would have been to have grown up in a place like that, surrounded by comfort and privilege, as so many of his friends had done… And suddenly, the longing was stronger than ever, to see the man who had given him his name.  Did they really look alike? 

He got to his feet as if in a trance, beckoned by the distant music… and suddenly, he was at the door, ringing the great brass doorbell, with no idea how he had arrived there.  A maid answered the door, dressed in black and white, and looked at him strangely.  The hallway behind her was pannelled with oak, and full of portraits of muggles in old fashioned clothes, their painted faces cold and unmoving.  She turned and called someone inside the house, making Tom wait outside.

After a while, a man in a dinner jacket came to the door with a cocktail glass and a bemused smile, which disappeared completely when he laid eyes on Tom.  Tom felt like his insides were dissolving.  The man looked just like him, only older.  The wide, dark eyes were Tom’s eyes, the mouth hanging open in dumb shock was his mouth, his eyebrows, disappearing into his black hair…  The cocktail glass fell onto the floor between them and shattered.

Tom waited for the rage he had expected to feel at the sight of the man who had abandoned him, but it never came.  Instead, he felt something quite different.  Similarly, there was no scowl of disdain from the Muggle.  He simply lifted his hand to his mouth and stared, and his eyes were wet with tears, and so were Tom’s… their eyes were the same…

“Oh my God,” he said at last.  “I never knew…”

Suddenly, Tom felt afraid.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  It couldn’t be like this.  Not with _That Muggle_.  It was all wrong.

“What’s your name?”

Tom couldn’t answer, apart from to shake his head.

“Would you like to come inside?”

He shook his head again. 

The man turned; he was calling to his father and mother to come out.  The terror was building in Tom now, almost to a fever pitch inside him.  He should never have come here.  He did not belong here.  He belonged in another world, and the two were utterly incompatible.  As the Heir of Salazar Slytherin, he had a purpose, a destiny… The Muggle would only frustrate it.  Why, oh why did he come?

The Muggle turned back to see him running away, and he called after Tom to come back, telling him not to be afraid, but Tom did not listen.  He cast a disillusionment charm over himself so the Muggle would not be able to follow him… and he was running, running for his life, back towards the shack, back to where Morfin Gaunt still lay, stupefied… he rifled through the ragged robes, searching, until his fingers closed around the wooden tip of a wand… He knew what he had to do, but it couldn’t be with his own wand.  Nobody should be able to trace it back to him.

Still, he hesitated, Gaunt’s wand in his trembling hand.  He had never done anything quite like this before.  To many, it would be considered the supreme act of evil…

Precisely at that moment, the faint shaft of a moonbeam shining through one of the filthy windows caught something glimmering, incongruously, on Gaunt’s hand – a ring, inlaid with a heavy black stone.  Though clumsily made, it seemed ill-fitted to its sordid surroundings.  Curious, Tom slipped it off the nailbitten, grubby finger and turned it over in his hands. 

Then, in the eerie moonlight, Tom thought he saw something move… There was someone else in the room, he hadn’t noticed before… a girl… crying… It was a hateful sound, and in that moment, Tom would have done anything just to make it stop.  He covered his ears, but it did not get any less, and even seemed to be ringing inside his own head….The girl looked up at Tom, and he saw her ugly, cross-eyed, tear-stained face.  Somehow, he knew who she was.

“Mother…?”

She gazed him dumbly for a moment, then began crying again. 

Behind her, Tom could just about make out another shadowy figure, who now stepped forward into the light, revealing a wizened, monkey-like face and a trailing beard that reached almost to the floor.  Tom gasped.  It was a face he had spent hours gazing at, studying, even talking to, by himself in that secret chamber, under the school… The face of the one wizard he admired, in all the world.  He fell to his knees in awe.

“My Lord!”

This ancient wizard eyed him sternly, and spoke to him in Parseltongue. His voice was the cracked, dry whisper of over a thousand years in the tomb.

_“Why do you hesitate, child? You know what to do…”_

“Yes…”

_“It’s the only way… Otherwise you will be no better than a mudblood, a traitor, like the others… Avenge the shame they have brought upon my house… Only then will you be worthy to call yourself my heir…”_

Tom felt his resolve building, and nodded bravely.  “I – I won’t let you down.”

He stood up, slipping the ring into his pocket, and the figures vanished as quickly as they came – still, he was resolute, and filled with a new fervour.  He would not be a traitor.  He would sever all ties with _That Muggle_ … change his name, even his face, if he had to.  From now on, his father was Salazar Slytherin himself. 

He flew back to the house, floating on the wind, like a cloud of supreme vengeance, Nemesis herself… This time, he did not ring the doorbell, but blew open the great oak doors with a flick of Gaunt’s wand.  He found them in the dining room, all three, gorging themselves like pigs… They looked up at him, terrified.  But, there was no mercy now, no tears… No feelings…  Only the powerful blood of Slytherin coursing through his veins, emboldening him, strengthening… He would prove himself worthy.

The deed itself was very easy.  Grandfather first, his grey head snapping back on his neck, like a flower with a  broken stem… then Grandmother, face into the soup, pearls and all… and finally… _That Muggle_ … he was up from the table now, rattling the locked door uselessly…  And Tom laughed, a surprisingly high, cold, cackle, that seemed to come from outside himself… The Muggle turned towards him, pleadingly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was young – forgive me – “

But Tom killed him, too, and that was that. 

For a moment he stood in the middle of the room, swaying slightly, drunk on the magnitude of what he had just done; then he ran outside and vomited.   When his stomach finally stopped heaving, he curled up on the dewey grass and wept for a long time, but whether it was from relief or regret, joy or sorrow, he couldn’t tell.


	10. Harry Potter, the Prisoner of Azkaban

He was still weeping when Harry prised the golden box from his hands and threw it to one side.  He pulled Tom into his arms and held on tightly, stroking his hair and covering it with soft, tender kisses.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, soothingly.  “It’s over now.  I’m here.”

“I murdered them all,” sobbed Tom into Harry’s shoulder, his entire body shaking.  “My own father… my grandparents… my own flesh and blood, all I had left in the world… and I… I was glad to do it…”

“You weren’t yourself,” said Harry.  “You hardly knew what you were doing…”

“I did… Oh, Harry… I was more myself then, than I am now.  You don’t know me, not really… I’m different when I’m with you…”

“I do know you,” Harry said, emphatically.  “Better than you know yourself, even.”

 “I still don’t understand how…” Tom let out a shuddering sigh.  “Anyway, I wish you didn’t think so well of me.  I don’t deserve it.”

“You do,” whispered Harry.

Tom sniffled, quieter now, and curved his arm around Harry’s neck to return the embrace.  He couldn’t understand how something could feel so wonderful, and hurt quite so much at the same time.  It was as if something in his very being rebelled against happiness… and yet, he was happy, all the same.  For a while they were silent, both marvelling at the alien sense of belonging they felt in each other’s arms.

 “What have you done with the ring?” asked Tom, after some time, his head still resting on Harry’s shoulder.

Harry reached back to retrieve it from where it had fallen.  “It’s just –“ He stopped and looked back to where his hand was groping against the bare floorboards. He had a cold, sinking feeling in his stomach.  “It was just here, a moment ago…”

They broke apart, and looked around, confused.

 “It seems you have lost something, gentlemen.”

A mocking, disembodied voice cut through the putrid air, and the golden box suddenly appeared from out of the gloom.  At first, it seemed to be levitating, but then Harry saw the hand which held it. 

It was just a hand, suspended in mid-air, with no arm or body attached.  Tom looked astonished, but Harry, with a sinking feeling, knew immediately what was going on.

“The Invisibilty Cloak…” he groaned.

“Excellent, Mr Potter…” said the disembodied voice, with genuine admiration.  The cloak slipped silkily away, revealing the tall, auburn-haired Minister for Magic.  He regarded Harry keenly through his half-moon spectacles. “You really are a first-rate spy.”

“I’m not –“ Harry began, but Dumbledore held up his hand.

“Please – spare me your protestations.  There is quite enough evidence against you for a lifetime in Azkaban.  Not only have you been plotting to overthrow me, a treasonable offence, you have been spreading lies and malicious rumours, consorting freely with criminals and suspect individuals, and have formed a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and free a convicted traitor.  Need I say more?  Yes, I have been watching you very closely since you took up residence on Knockturn Alley - I hope you didn’t really think you’d fooled me that day, did you, Tom?”

Tom stared at him, mortified.  Evidently, he had.

“Ah,” said Dumbledore, quietly.  “As always, your arrogance has made you incautious.  Well, no doubt you, too, will have plenty of time to reflect on your mistakes.  Admittedly, you were unusually proficient at covering your tracks, but we were all very moved by your emotional confession just now.  A triple murder… Good heavens, Tom.”

Tom’s eyes grew wider, and even in the gloomy twilight, Harry saw his face turn grey. 

“It was rather touching, seeing your friendship blossom,” Dumbledore went on.  “And not to mention fruitful.  I would never have guessed the stone was in your possession, and if Harry had not persuaded you to lead me to it, it would have taken a great deal longer to track down… As to revealing the full extent of the conspiracy, your associate Lestrange proved invaluable… He had no idea of course - inbreeding rarely coincides with intelligence - but I was able to lure you both into the open with threats against your friends and loved ones… Not empty threats, as it happens.  My Ministry is committed to creating a more egalitarian future, and I am afraid many of them stand in the way…”

He turned to Harry. “Your cousin Fleamont was an early supporter of my cause, but I am afraid he began to prove troublesome… Would you believe that he had the audacity to call my ideals ‘too pure’ and ‘not pragmatic enough’?  Well, I soon began to see that _his_ motives were base, mercenary even, and that he was not at all the sort of person we would want to be associated with our movement… Plus, I needed the cloak.” A slightly devious smile flickered across his lips.  “So, in a way, your cousin was wrong, in that I am perfectly disposed to a little pragmatism when necessary.”

Harry gazed at Dumbledore, speechless.  How could it have come to this?  There was a rattle at the door, and suddenly the tiny shack was filled with scowling wizards, wearing the same dark uniforms Harry had witnessed on the first evening in Borgin and Burke’s: the Order of the Phoenix.  He moved to disapparated, but hesitated – Tom was still standing motionless, frozen to the spot, as though he could hardly process the fact that the terrible secret he had been so careful to conceal all these years was suddenly out in the open, the result of a few ill-chosen words spoken in a moment of weakness.   He seemed a pale shadow of the acerbic clerk whose stunning spell had floored six hefty men at once.

“Tom, come on!”

Harry reached out to grab his arm and pull the other boy away with him, but it was already too late.  He was it by two or three body-binding spells at once; out of the corner of his eye, he saw the same thing had happened to Tom.

“Take them away,” Dumbledore said, his voice and expression suddenly colourless.

Somebody grabbed Harry roughly by the arm and frogmarched him into the street.  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of red hair and freckles, and, as awful as the situation already was, it somehow that made him feel much worse.

The next few hours were a blur of rough-handling, gruff voices questioning him and _lumos maxima_ being cast directly in his eyes.  Eventually, something like a kind of bucket was put over his head, and in an instant he felt his stomach flip as he was transported through space by some unknown means.  He finally felt himself crash-land on a hard surface that smelled faintly of disinfectant, and the bucket was taken off his head.  The red-haired, freckled wizard they had called Weasley stood in front of him, carrying a clipboard and wearing a variation on the Order uniform without the phoenix armbands.  It was slightly more official-looking, and he wore a name-badge which read ‘Septimus’.

“Welcome to Azkaban, gentlemen,” he said, smugly.

The room they were in was white and clinical looking, with the kind of enamel brick tiling that you would find in old tube stations or Victorian lavatories; rather different from the Azkaban he remembered. Harry heard Tom groan beside him, and was glad to know that he had survived as well.  He stretched his aching limbs and looked up at Septimus, blinking in the harsh light.

“Azkaban?  Already?  Aren’t we supposed to have some sort of trial?” he asked.

Septimus looked down at his clipboard.  “It doesn’t say anything here about a trial.  You’re a spy, aren’t you?”

“Allegedly,” said Harry.

“Name?”

Harry thought for a moment.  “Roonil Wazlib,” he said, after a brief pause.  He did not want to bring the Potter name into any more disrepute. 

Septimus gave Harry a funny look.  “What kind of name is that?”

“…An alias?” said Harry. "We spies tend to have them."

Septimus narrowed his eyes and wrote something down on his clipboard.  “Have you ever been detained at St Mungo’s or a similar institution housing the mentally deranged?” he asked.

“Well, my uncle Vernon was pretty deranged, and I used to have to stay at 4 Privet Drive every summer,” said Harry.

“What’s that?”

“A joke,” said Harry.  “Sorry.”

“You will be,” said Septimus.  “Jokes aren’t allowed in Azkaban.”  He turned towards Tom.  “Name, please.”

“You know my name,” said Tom, rolling his eyes.  “We had transfiguration class together for seven years.”

Septimus tapped his clipboard impatiently.  “I know, but it’s protocol.  The Minister would like to give everyone the option of being called by their preferred name. It builds a sense of community.”

 Tom sighed.  “My _friends_ call me Lord Voldemort.”

Septimus pursed his lips disapprovingly.  "We don't recognise aristocratic titles here.  The Minister wishes to promote the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity for both wizards and muggles.  So I'm just going to put you down as 'Mr.'"

"…Mr Voldemort?" Tom repeated, incredulously.

"Yes."

"But that doesn't work at all!  The letters are all wrong, for a start…"

"It's either that, or a number," said Septimus, curtly.

Tom looked sullen. 

Septimus went on.  "Now – you are to get undressed, please, and empty your pockets.  The showers are through there, and  your regulation robes will be along shortly.Your wands have already been confiscated, of course.  I will take an inventory of your possessions, which will be returned to you should you ever leave.”

With that, he turned on his heel and loped away.  Harry and Tom undressed and showered in silence, without looking at each other.  The ordeal of being arrested still weighed painfully on their minds and bodies, and Harry felt a distinct buzz of resentment from Tom, as if he blamed Harry for what had happened.  He sighed. 

Septimus returned with wizard Harry thought he recognised, who was wearing black-and-white prison robes and pushing a large cart of laundry.

"Avery!" said Tom, astonished.  The other wizard looked up in surprise, and a smile of pure joy spread across his face.  He came towards them, holding out his hands.

"My Lord - ow!  Weasley!  What did you do that for?" He suddenly recoiled in pain, and rounded angrily on Septimus, who had just administered him with a brief electric shock from his wand.

"What have I told you about aristocratic titles?”  Use 'comrade', please, if you must address each other."

Avery looked at Tom uncertainly; his superior gave a resigned shrug, and the Death Eater continued, visibly uncomfortable, whilst handing out regulation robes.

"…As delighted as I am to see you again… … _Comrade_ ," he said, his lips struggling to formulate the word. "I can't say I am pleased with the setting – take these ones, they’re the nicest quality, no fleas - I never thought you, of all people, would end up here – here, let me get those buttons, my L- I mean, Comrade – but what will happen to the others, now?"

"They'll have to carry on without me, for the time being," said Tom.  Harry thought he looked annoyingly dashing in the black and white stripes, whereas the ones Avery had given him were far too baggy, and brought back unpleasant memories of Dudley’s hand-me-downs.

Avery looked sad.  "But we're nothing without you… Our master, our dark king… ouch!"

Septimus shocked him again.  "Republics are the only legitimate form of government," he said.  "You might consider having a dark president, perhaps, or a dark prime minister."

Avery sighed angrily.  "This place is driving me mad," he said.  "I'm starting to think I would have preferred the dementors…"

Harry was surprised.  “They don’t have dementors here?”

Avery shook his head.  “Dumbledore thought them ‘inhumane’… Instead, we are to be ‘rehabilitated’ by constant propaganda and ‘low-level deterrents’ like that bloody shocking spell.”

“Humiliating…” murmured Tom, looking disgusted.

Suddenly, there was a commotion near the doorway.  Another wizard was being dragged in by two lackeys, a bucket-portkey over his head.

“How dare you manhandle me in such an appalling manner!” he was shrieking.  “Do you know who I am, you stupid pair of louts?  My father –“

“Your father is currently on trial before the Wizengamot for gross embezzlement of Ministry funds,” said Septimus, removing the portkey and dismissing the guards.  “Welcome to Azkaban, Mr Lestrange.  I always knew I’d see you here sooner or later.”

“Lestrange!” said Avery, happily.  “Fancy seeing you here.  It’s like all the old gang back together again…”

Septimus tutted disapprovingly.  “I must ask permission from the Minister to write and inform Professor Slughorn of the infamy of his former pet students.  That stupid Slug Club should be banned, associations like those can only lead to social decay…”

“Your face leads to social decay,” said Lestrange, childishly.  Tom and Avery tittered. “You _wish_ you could have been one of us.”  

“I absolutely do not,” said Septimus, angrily, although his ears had turned a rather treacherous shade of red.  He gripped the clipboard, tightly.  “I could have gotten in, had I wanted to.  But I didn’t, as a matter of principle –“

“Funny,” said Avery, with a sly smile.  “That’s exactly what I was saying about your mum last night.” 

Septimus gave a little scream of frustrated rage. “Right,” he said, his cheeks flaming.  “Avery – back to your cell, immediately! Lestrange, wait over there _in silence_ until I am ready for you.  And you two – give me your things.  Jones – _Jones_!”


	11. Fleabag

Jones, a tiny, twitching wizard came running in with a huge leather-bound ledger almost the same size as him, so that at first it looked as though the ledger itself was scuttling towards them with little buckled shoes.

Septimus took Harry’s pile first.  “Note this down, please, under – er – Roonil Wazlib.  Outer robe – navy, worn.  Jacket - grey, reasonable condition. Shirt - white, hole in one elbow.  Jeans - blue denim, worn. Socks – white, one pair.  Shoes – brown, one pair.  Ancillary items – six sickles, one knut, and one – one crunchy thingummy –“

“It’s a sherbert lemon wrapper,” said Harry, helpfully.

“Eh?”

“A muggle sweet.”

Septimus looked suddenly interested.  “Is it really?” he said, inspecting it closely.  “Muggles eat this?”

“No - that’s just the plastic wrapper –“

“Plastic!” said Septimus enthusiastically, scrunching it and stretching it out repeatedly.  “Well I never.  Look at this, Jones – _plastic_ …”

“You can have it, if you want,” said Harry, magnanimously.

Septimus looked up, evidently touched.  “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” said Harry. “I’ve got loads at home.”

Septimus smiled.  “Well – thank you – I – er… Well then.  Next, Jones, please.”  He cleared his throat.  “Under _Mister_ Voldemort –“ Tom gave an exasperated sigh. “Outer robes – black, reasonable condition.  Jacket, black.  Waistcoat, black - I’m beginning to sense a pattern, here, Jones -Trousers, black.  Shirt, black.  All reasonable condition.  Socks – black, one pair.  Shoes – black, one pair.  Ancillary items – one diary – black, unused.”

“It’s a muggle diary,” said Tom.  “You can have that for your collection, too.”

Harry shot him a sideways glance.  He had that wide-eyed, earnest look, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth... In other words, he was definitely up to something.

Septimus also looked suspicious.  “I won’t be bribed,” he said, sternly.

“Oh no,” said Tom, innocently.  “It’s just that I won’t really be needing it – it’s out of date, now, anyway - but I thought you might appreciate it.  I’m sorry for what my friend said just now, about your mother.  I’m sure she’s a lovely lady.”

Septimus looked from the diary to Tom and then back again.  He opened it, leafing through the pages.

“It has all the muggle bank holidays in,” he said, rather wistfully.

“Yes,” said Tom, nodding encouragingly.  “It does.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” said Septimus, giving into temptation at last.  “But don’t think you’re getting any special treatment.”

***

As if to prove a point, Tom and Harry were thrown into a cell with only two bunk beds and one other occupant, who looked as though he might have once been rather dapper, before he had fallen on hard times in Azkaban. His hair was swept into a high, rather ridiculous-looking bouffant style, which looked as though once it had been slicked back away from his face with a great deal of grease; now, however, a number of rebellious black strands had ironically gained their freedom at the hands of their owner's imprisonment, and danced tantalizingly around his face. He looked up hopefully on Harry and Tom's arrival.

“… I don’t suppose either of you chaps have a mirror,” he said, weakly.  “I’ve been in here for a week… with not so much as a bar of soap… my hair must be in a shocking state…”

“No,” said Tom, coldly.  

His sweet and pleasing manner dropped like a carelessly discarded item of clothing the moment the cell door was closed.

Harry, for his part opened his mouth to reply; but the words caught in his throat when he realised that - for the first time in his whole life - he was face-to-face with a living relation on his father’s side.

Fleamont heaved a sigh of despair, and took off his cracked, horn-rimmed spectacles, polishing them against his ill-fitting black and white prison robes.  When he put them on again, he paused and frowned suddenly, looking at Tom. 

“Don’t I know you…?” he said, peering at Tom.  “Tim… Tim Roddy…?”

Tom glared daggers at him, and Harry felt rather nervous on Fleamont’s behalf.

 “Tom Riddle,” he said, quietly.

“That’s right!” said Fleamont, overjoyed, ignoring Tom’s ominous expression.  He clapped him hard on the back.  “Fancy seeing you here!  I must admit, you’re the last person I thought I’d see behind bars, a goody two-shoes like you… What are you in for, refusing to give your Head Boy badge back?”

“Murder, actually,” growled Tom.

Fleamont’s smile faded rapidly.  “Oh,” he said, awkwardly.  “Well then…  I guess they do say it’s always the quiet ones…  Even so, I am rather glad to see a familiar face… and you…” He turned to Harry.  “I know you from somewhere, as well, don’t I?  Although I’m sorry to say, your name escapes me…”

“Harry,” said Harry, finally finding his tongue.

“Harry!” cried Fleamont.  “Of course!  How could I forget… that was my father’s name, you know.”

Harry nodded, smiling and staring at his grandfather, fascinated.  Fleamont, for his part, began to feel uncomfortable.

“Not a talkative chap, are you?  I suppose you’re a murderer, as well?”

Harry shook his head, but Fleamont continued to regard him somewhat worriedly.  He realised he should perhaps say something.

  “I’m a spy – I mean, I’m not, but -” he stammered awkwardly. “That’s what they’re saying.  It’s complete rubbish, I don’t even know who they think I’m spying for.”

Fleamont nodded ruefully.  “Sounds about right.  Dumbledore and his minions are all completely barmy.  I’m supposed to have stolen my own cloak, for Merlin’s sake -”

“Didn’t you?” asked Tom, pointedly.  He was looking at Fleamont rather strangely.

Fleamont blushed.  “Of course not… I simply… tried to take it back, after Dumbledore – borrowed it –“

“Borrowed it?  In return for payment?”

“No!  It wasn’t payment… it was a favour, that’s all…” Fleamont stammered.

“A favour that made you a significant amount of money.”

“Well I – no, I – I already had the basic components of the potion… He just suggested the _Gomas Barbadensis_  might improve the… How do you know all this, anyway?”

Tom shrugged, leaning against the wall.  “Know what?  I just had the feeling you weren’t telling the whole truth - but thanks for supplying the details… Most interesting.”

Fleamont looked angry.  “I always knew you were a little shit.  That’s why I locked you in the toilet –“

“I always knew you weren’t _actually_ good at potions.”

“I would have figured it out eventually!” cried Fleamont, indignantly, his glasses askew.  “He just helped me get to the answer quicker, that’s all –“

“I’m _sure_ you’re right -” Tom interrupted, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Leave him alone!” yelled Harry, suddenly. He had been feeling anger and annoyance building in him throughout their entire bickering conversation.  He was annoyed at Fleamont because he was frivolous and silly-sounding and reminded him more than ever of Gilderoy Lockhart, taking credit for something he hadn’t done himself.  But even more so, he was annoyed at Tom for so deliberately trying to discredit him.  “What’s your problem, anyway?”

“I was merely pointing out your beloved grandfather’s flimsy excuse for a story –“

“Why?” said Harry, angrily.  “So I can be as disappointed with my family as you were with yours?”

Tom’s eyes widened a fraction in shock; then he scowled.  Again, Harry was struck at how easily his handsome features could melt away, disfigured by bitterness.  His mouth was twisted, his expression full of venomous jealousy, and at the same time he looked thin and weak, dark circles appearing like bruises under his eyes.  In the stripy prison uniform, he reminded Harry strangely of those angry-but-sluggish wasps of late summer which, aware of their own impending mortality, are determined to drive as many stings home as possible before they are finally defeated by the frost.

“I hate you,” he spat.  “I wish I had never met you.  Then at least I wouldn’t be in this mess –“

“ _I_ wish I’d never met _you_ ,” Harry shouted.  “At least I didn’t kill your entire family – well, I couldn’t’ve, because you got there first –“

“Shut up!  Shut up!” yelled Tom, his hands over his ears.  He sank into the corner, hugging his knees to his chest.

Fleamont backed away slowly.  “I feel like I’m missing something here…” he said. “... Grandfather?”

Harry sighed.  “Yes.  I’m your grandson, Harry James Potter, from the future,” he said.  "Hi."  He didn’t have the energy to construct any more elaborate story – Fleamont was just going to have to take his word for it.

There was a long pause while the older Potter processed this information. 

“Riiiight…” he said, very slowly, after a while.  “And how –“

“I don’t know,” said Harry, deeply exhausted.  “I really don’t know.  It doesn’t make any sense.  Can I have the top bunk?”

Fleamont sucked in his cheeks and pushed his glasses further up his nose, a gesture Harry recognised as one of his own habits. 

“All right,” Fleamont said at last. He glanced at Tom.  “And what about –“

“I’m sure he’ll be just fine where he is,” said Harry, bitterly.  He climbed into the bunk, trying hard not to look at Tom’s pathetic frame curled up in the corner.  He knew it hadn’t been fair of him to bring up that incident so flippantly, just to score a point.  Nevertheless, it didn’t seem right that somebody could commit such a heinous crime and then expect Harry to actually feel sorry for him about it.  He sighed angrily and beat his flat, flimsy pillow hard; it hurt, and Harry wondered if it might have been made from a (badly) transfigured rock.

Deep down, of course, he knew the real reason for his anger.  It hurt that Tom had been ignoring him all day, and that he was being blamed.  It wasn’t Harry’s fault they had ended up here.  If Tom hadn’t gone catatonic, he could have apparated them to safety.  He heaved another angry sigh, shoved his face into the pillow-rock, and tried to sleep.

"Psst, Harry," said Fleamont, after a while, from the bottom bunk.

"What?"

"What am I like in the future?" he asked nervously.

"I don't know," said Harry, quietly. "You died before I was born."

"Oh," said Fleamont, slightly put out. There was a pause. "But before I died... I wasn't bald, was I?"

"For Pete’s sake..." Harry muttered. He had met some shallow people in his life, but this took the biscuit. "Shut up, Fleamont," he said. "Go to sleep."

"Okay," sighed Fleamont, and Harry heard the springs creak in the bed below as Fleamont turned over. Harry closed his eyes.

"...I was, wasn't I?" asked Fleamont, after a few minutes.

"GO TO SLEEP," said Harry.

***

Tom sat listening to their banal exchange, seething with rage.  He felt betrayed at how quickly Harry had turned against him, now that he had discovered his precious grandfather.  He hated both of them, and hated himself for being weak enough to feel this way.  No matter what protestations of loyalty people made, the primordial connection of consanguinuity seemed to trump everything, in the end.  Blood bound wizards together, more than anything else.  The magic coursing through it was what made their family ties so strong, much stronger than the ersatz liquid that ran in muggle veins.

He _knew_ that.  He had known it since he was eleven years old, and he had found himself isolated and alone once more, in a different way, after thinking he had left that particular pain behind him in Wool's… He was a fool then, and he was a fool now for thinking it would ever be any different.

But Harry had been a half-blood, like him… Alone, like him…

But no.   That wasn't exactly right, was it?  He was alone _because_ of him, because of something he did, or at least would do.  He had chosen him, created him, maybe even put something of himself into him - a piece of his own soul.  Wasn't that how Harry had explained this, this… connection?

 Surely it was that which he saw reflected back at him, and made his own soul burn with the desire for a more complete union… He vaguely remembered, back in junior school, translating a Latin story about a man who fell in love with his own, perfect creation.  Or was it a poem…? Ovid, or something like that. 

Whatever it was, it hurt.  It hurt so much, that he could hardly stand now to even look at Harry, even as he wanted to be near him.  The eyes, the windows to the soul, so clearly reflected what was missing, and the pain was like nothing Tom had ever felt before, and he had suffered much in his as yet relatively short life.

Whenever Harry looked at him with sadness or anger, he felt as though he was almost _burning_ on the inside.

The prophecy had said Harry would kill him.

What if it was right?


	12. Mind games and Mating Nets

No sooner had each of the new inmates managed to nod off, Jones came around clanging a large bell, which obliged them all to get up, make their beds and report to the Mess Hall for breakfast.  Tom, unsurprisingly, was frosty with the other two cellmates after the previous night’s heated exchange.  Harry's stomach twisted with guilt at the sight of him; he looked like he hadn't slept at all - the dark circles under his eyes bloomed ever larger, and his hair was uncharacteristically awry.   Still, Harry's own wounded pride stubbornly refused to show any sympathy.

Breakfast turned out to be a bowl of indistinct slop, served to them unceremoniously by a rather disillusioned-looking House Elf.  In fact, Azkaban with Dumbledore as Minister was not unlike Hogwarts when he had been headmaster, only the food was a lot worse.  You wandered around in uniform, got taught valuable lessons about social cohesion and sometimes people randomly disappeared during the night, never to be seen again.  Sure, the brainwashing, Ministry-worshipping guards were marginally worse than prefects, but Harry preferred them to dementors.

Harry, Tom and Fleamont were joined on one of the long refectory-style tables by Avery, Lestrange and Nott, a wizard of around Fleamont's age who had been arrested along with his father for disseminating supremacist propaganda.

"Ugh," Fleamont whispered to Harry.  "He's the one who started all this 'Sacred Twenty-Eight' claptrap, and calling me 'Fleabag' just because my great-grandmother was a muggle-born."

Harry wrinkled his nose at Nott in distaste, although it could have just as easily been taken as a reaction to the slop, of which he had just taken a large, unsavoury mouthful.  It somehow managed to be both watery and stodgy at the same time.

"To be honest, that's the whole reason I got caught up in this mess," Fleamont continued, in a low voice.  "I wanted to get my own back on them, you know?  I never imagined it would go so far… Dumbledore was always nice to me, especially after he realised I had that cloak.  I never really thought much of it myself - it was something we'd had in the family for years, fun for playing schoolboy pranks, but not much else… My father, after he was pushed out of the Wizengamot, left us with a lot of debts… Dumbledore offered us a way to get back onto our feet - and even I didn't imagine how successful _Sleekeazy_ would be…"

Even as he tried to concentrate on what Fleamont was saying, Harry's eyes were inevitably drawn towards Tom, who was studiously ignoring him by reading the _Daily Prophet_.  Or was he?  … He hadn't turned the page in a while, and Harry had the distinct sense that he was somehow listening in.

"Something caught your eye?" he asked, in a loud voice, cutting Fleamont off mid-sentence.

Tom looked up, and for a split second he seemed startled to have been caught out.  However, he quickly regained his cool and graced Harry with an icy smile.

"Look,” he said.  “Fame at last." 

He propelled the paper across to Harry, who caught it out of the air and spread it open on the table in front of him.   It seemed their arrest had merited a mention in the tabloid, and Harry was amused to see himself described as _notorious criminal mastermind, Roonil Wazlib_.  Tom, instead, was the innocent model student who had been led astray.  The paper printed a photograph of him at sixteen, receiving the prize for special services to Hogwarts.  He looked vaguely embarrassed to be in the photograph, and kept trying to hide behind the trophy by edging it up to cover his face; Professor Dippet endeavoured to force it down again, beaming sweatily into the glare of the flash.  Harry smiled in spite of himself, and tore the article out to save it.

"I must say," said Fleamont, reading over his shoulder.  "I am surprised your friend Timmy got caught up with that pureblood crowd, although being in Slytherin it probably can't be helped.  They used to tease him something awful too, because of where he came from, until… well - I'm not sure what happened, really.  Maybe they found out about his criminal connections - I had no idea he knew Roonil Wazlib, that fellow sounds like a right rotten scoundrel if you ask me…"

***

As Avery had said, inmates were allowed to choose a hobby for the sake of their own "personal development", in the hope that they wouldn't become hardened criminals and to ease their rehabilitation when, if ever, they were released.  Harry, of course, chose quidditch.

"Hurrah!" said Fleamont, delighted when he found out.  "That's what I chose."

"Quidditch?" said Tom, looking annoyed.  "Why on earth did you choose that?  It isn't at all useful for our purposes -"

Harry groaned.  "Oh, put a button in it, will you," he said.  "Have I ever told you about my friend Hermione?  Because I think you'd have really got on…"

"Harry, I am serious.  Do you plan on spending the rest of your life in this godforsaken place?  Because I don't."

Harry shrugged.  The truth was, he was finding prison life, with its familiarity and routine, fairly relaxing in comparison with the confusion of the last few days, or indeed his whole life.  He was also getting to spend time with Fleamont, who, despite being rather shallow, was easygoing and fun, and Harry liked him.  He was also an excellent sparring partner for Quidditch, a broomstick ace who was not afraid to go right up to the wire when on the snitch's trail; in fact, the only thing he seemed at all afraid of was anything that might interfere with his carefully crafted pompadour.

"So, Harry," he said, one afternoon, as they were putting their broomsticks away.  "If I'm your grandfather… who on earth is your grand _mother_?  It's funny, I never really pictured myself settling down with just one witch, if you know what I mean…"

"Her name was Euphemia."

" _Euphemia_?" Fleamont stared at Harry in disbelief.  "The one with the… mole…?" He gestured in the general direction of his nose.

"Er - I don't really know," said Harry.  "Like I said, I never met either of you."

"Euphemia…" Fleamont repeated to himself.  "Good grief… she was like, what - ten, eleven girlfriends ago?  And she slapped me pretty hard when she found out I'd been seeing Loretta Longbottom at the same time… Who'd have believed we'd ever have got back together…"

"Maybe you didn't, in this universe," Harry said, glumly.  "I feel like you were slightly less of a git where I come from."

"I suppose that's what making a million galleons straight out of school does to you," said Fleamont, with a heavy sigh.

They often sat together at mealtimes, whilst Tom sat apart with his loyal group of Slytherins.  He was clearly unbearably jealous of Fleamont, although he could not bring himself to admit it:  Harry could feel Tom's eyes on him constantly whilst he ate, although he always looked away snootily whenever Harry turned around.

Only a few days in, they were all startled by an anguished cry from the Slytherin circle:  Lestrange's father had been found guilty by the Wizengamot and executed, without appeal.  The other Death Eaters crowded around him sympathetically, but he could not be comforted - not even by Avery's suggestion that he would at least definitely be able to join the headless hunt if he came back as a ghost.

Fleamont looked pale as he gazed over at Lestrange, who was slumped over his father's photograph in the _Daily Prophet_ in tears.

"Oh no," he said.  "It's begun in earnest.  And to think - I helped -,"

"You couldn't have known," said Harry, reassuringly.

Fleamont regarded him through the horn-rimmed spectacles, his brow creased with worry.

"Couldn't I, though?  Sometimes I think I turned a blind eye… I was so interested  in the money - the girls - the high life, I didn't really want to think about where it was all headed.  I only wanted to knock some sense into those pompous purebloods… I didn't mean for anyone to get killed."

"It really isn't your fault," Harry said.  "I'm sure Dumbledore seemed perfectly reasonable, at first…"

Fleamont nodded.  "He said it would all be for the good of the muggles… for humanity… But then again, that's what Grindelwald said, as well, and look what's happening in Germany.  Arrests, torture, mass killings -"

 _If he really does feel a sense of remorse, there is something he could do to atone for his sins_ , thought Harry.  Then he blinked, and shook his head in confusion.  What a weird thing to think… Unless…

"I know, it doesn't bear thinking about," said Fleamont, mistaking Harry's confusion for revulsion at Grindelwald's barbaric regime.

"No, it's just -" Harry looked over at Tom, who was sitting slightly apart from the crowd of Slytherins surrounding Lestrange, his chin resting in his palm, seemingly deep in thought.  He met Harry's gaze and smiled slightly.

 _Hello Harry_ , thought Harry, only it wasn't him thinking at all.

E _xcuse me?!  What in Merlin's name are you doing in my head_ , Harry thought back, angrily.

_I needed to gauge Fleabag's true feelings… I am in two minds, if you'll excuse the pun, as to whether to recruit him or not.  He could turn out to be exceedingly useful to our cause…_

Our _cause?_

_Well, mine then…_

_How are you even doing this_ , wondered Harry.

_Funny you should ask that… the truth is, I'm not entirely sure.  I observed that your mind was unusually open to me, as mine is to you, in times of exceptional emotion or stress… After that, it was only a matter of a little studious application to enable me to keep the connection open at other times, too…_

_I feel violated…_

_Don't be so prim, Harry.  Why, just the other day, you were begging to have me inside you…_

Harry glared at Tom across the table.  _Not like this, obviously._

Fleamont waved his hand in front of Harry's eyes.  "Coo-ee," he said.  "Come in, Harry, I think I'm losing you…"

"Sorry," said Harry.  "My mind wanders away with me sometimes."

_What do you mean Fleamont might atone for his sins?_

_It would be  useful for the resistance to have a friend on the inside of Dumbledore's regime…  If you persuade dear old pops to write to the Minister, confessing to have seen the error of his ways in Azkaban and pledging undying loyalty to the new regime… perhaps he could be that friend…_

Harry paused to consider this… Fleamont as a double agent?  He wasn't sure his rather frivolous, fun-loving grandfather was  quite up to the task.

_You never know, perhaps that nice-but-dim persona will enable him to fall under the sneakoscope, so to speak…_

Check.

 _Still, you're asking a lot, Tom…_ Harry thought about everything that Snape had been through with Voldemort, and what a skilled occlumens he'd had to be.  If anything, Dumbledore was a more formidable opponent…  He felt a short, sharp pain in his scar.

_What do you mean, more formidable?  Anyway, I must ask a great deal of everyone, if we're ever going to get out of here and face up to Dumbledore._

Check.

 _I don't know, Tom… S_ urely it was wrong to try to manipulate his own grandfather into acting as an accomplice to Lord Voldemort, of all people, in an as yet undisclosed plan.  Plus, he didn't want to put Fleamont in any more danger…

_You know, Harry, if Fleamont is welcomed back into the fold, he might be able to convince Dumbledore to temporarily part with his famous pensieve… You could finally go home and see your friends again…_

Checkmate.

"Fine," grumbled Harry out loud, feeling his arm expertly twisted.  "Listen Fleamont, how do you feel about getting out of here?"

***

Harry was not sure what to make of the fact that Tom had found a way into his brain. He hadn't had a real chance yet to properly consider the connection which so obviously still existed between them, even though that thread was supposed to have been cut that night in the Forbidden Forest.  Dumbledore had implied the part of Voldemort's soul which had lodged itself in Harry's scar had been destroyed by the _Avada Kedavra_ spell, but it didn't seem like that now. 

Truth be told, the idea that his old headteacher had visited him in a limbo realm, which looked suspiciously like Platform 9 ¾, to explain everything to him before his final battle with Voldemort seemed to grow more absurd every time he thought of it.

But if it was all nonsense, then what exactly was it that bound him and Tom together?  It wasn't the awful, inescapable shackle it had been during Harry's younger years… In a way, there was something comfortable about it - like having a twin.  An evil twin.  That he really wanted to have sex with.

Oh God, he wanted that so bad.  Rough sex.  Violent sex.  Hell, slow, gentle sex while they gazed into each other's eyes.  The perverseness of the idea only turned him on even more.  He wanted to -

 _Unfortunately, Harry, I don't think_ that _is physically possible, even with the aid of magical enhancers…_

 _GO AWAY,_ thought Harry loudly.


	13. The Anti-Horcrux

 That night in their cell, Fleamont sat hunched over a board and a piece of parchment, quill in hand, with Harry leaning over his shoulder, whilst Tom paced the floor, dictating.

"Illustrious leader," he began, in a clear voice.

"Il…lus…tree…us…" repeated Fleamont, slowly, scratching away at the parchment.

"It has two 'L's," said Harry, helpfully.

"Might I begin by congratulating your excellency on the first-rate institution you are running here at Azkaban?  Under your governance, the prison has transformed from a dark well of despair to a fountain of bright hope."

" _Well… despair… fountain_ ," murmured Fleamont, as he wrote.  "Nice imagery, by the way. Very aquatic."

"Thanks," said Tom.  He went on.  "Today is only the twenty-fourth day of my imprisonment, but already I feel myself revitalized with a renascent ("R-e-n-a-s-c-e-n-t," said Harry) revolutionary fervour.  Having strayed far from the correct path like a lost toad, I am found again, cradled in the warm sleeve-folds of the righteous Order of the Phoenix who are always on hand to correct my mistakes."

"Laying it on a bit thick, don't you think?" asked Harry, dubiously.

"With Dumbledore?  Not a chance.  He'll lap this stuff up, trust me.  The more words, the better."

The letter went on in the same vein for several pages.

_The only thing I lack, your excellency, is the light of your magnanimous presence… I have betrayed your trust, but still I dare to hope… My greatest wish… to join you in your struggle against humanity's oppressors… A mere fleck of polish on the inflexible wand of justice… Eternally grateful if your excellency should deign to reconsider… My purse and person ever at your service…_

_Your most ardent supporter, Comrade F Potter._

_P.S. I am appalled to read that international spy Roonil Wazlib has been using my father's name and likeness as a cover for his dastardly deeds and should be grateful for the chance to redeem the family honour._

"That should do it," said Tom, at last, leaning back and looking rather pleased with himself.

***

A few days later, a rather tired and disoriented Septimus Weasley entered their cell to announce that Fleamont had been summoned before the Minister, putting Fleamont in handcuffs and frogmarching him out of the cell.  When they had left, Tom flopped down on the bottom bunk with a sigh of satisfaction.

"It's all coming together, Harry," he said, excitedly.  "Just a few more days."

"'Til what?" asked Harry, absent-mindedly, de-twigging his broomstick.

"You'll see," said Tom.  "When you are ready, I shall make you privy to all my plans…"

"When I'm ready?" said Harry, looking up and grinning playfully.  "Excuse me - I'll have you know that I'm the criminal mastermind in this relationship.  According to the _Daily Prophet_ , I taught you everything you know."

Tom laughed, that warm, genuine laugh that Harry liked so much.  "As if you could teach me anything…"

"You underestimate me, Voldemort… I've done some things with my wand that you wouldn't even dream of."

"Oh, really?"

Their eyes met, and suddenly they were very aware that they were alone together in the cell, with no Fleamont to thwart their obsessive passion; the air between them sang with the unresolved tension of days without proper physical contact. 

Harry put his broom down and knelt against the bed.  "Unfortunately I don't have it on me right now… You'll just have to wait and see…"  He snaked his hand slowly, cautiously up Tom's thigh.

"Stop that," said Tom, swatting him away.  "Don't you ever think of anything else?"

Harry was hurt.  "Of course I do…”   He paused.  “I just… really like you," he said, finally, feeling foolish. 

It was more than that of course, but he couldn't find the words. Tom turned his eyes towards him, slowly.  They were like large, dark ink-wells in his pale face; they studied Harry with a strange intensity.

 "I _know_ ," he said, at last, with a strange expression Harry found impossible to fathom.  He seemed to have put as much effort into obscuring his own mind as he had into invading Harry's – and it was unbearable, not knowing what Tom really thought.

"Do you… like me?" Harry asked, in a small voice, suddenly feeling twelve years old again.  He remembered, at that age, agonising over whether to write something similar in the diary.  Fear had got the better of him then, but he had been handed a second chance.

Tom stared at him for what seemed like a very long time, with the same unfathomable expression.  Then he looked away, covering his eyes with his hands and smiling hopelessly.

"Yes," he said, and Harry's stomach did a victory somersault.  "But it's not that simple… is it?"

"Nothing ever is," said Harry, an irrepressible smile tugging at his lips, his scar aglow.  He prised one of Tom's hands away from his face, interlacing his own brown, calloused fingers with their pale, slender counterparts.

Suddenly, a cold wave of dread washed over him, making him feel queasy.  It was quite baffling at first, until he noticed the strange conflict that was playing out behind Tom's carefully guarded expression. What had seemed to him like occlumency was only uncertainty, as equal impulses of attraction and trepidation fought for dominance in Tom's heart.

"You're afraid of me," he said, with dawning realisation.  "You don't trust me."

Tom's gaze became harder, colder, more brittle.  "How can I trust someone who is prophesied to kill me?"

Harry felt the sense of dread turned quickly to anger;  that prophecy had been the bane of his whole existence.

"Because prophecies are a load of rubbish, Tom!  Merlin, I wish I'd never mentioned that stupid thing."

"But I can feel - I can feel that it's true, when you look at me - when you touch me -"

"I told you about that, it's because your soul -"

"No - no, it's not.  It's not," said Tom, cutting him off sharply.  "Believe it or not, I know what fragmenting one's soul feels like, Harry.  And it's not this.  If anything, it's the exact _opposite_ of this…" 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…" said Tom, pausing to think.  "It's like, the horcruxes were painful to make, but then, once I'd done it, I sort of felt numb… So disconnected from the thing, I could barely even remember what it had felt like to have that as part of me in the first place… but with you, I remember everything… I can feel everything… your thoughts, my thoughts… thoughts I never knew I had, or that I tried to forget… I tried so hard, Harry, to remove every trace of weakness, and it was working - it was working so well, until you came along, and decided to ruin everything, just like you did the other time with your stupid little-baby powers or what -have-you.  Seriously, what a joke.  It's like you were designed specifically to get in my way."

Harry blinked.  "I'm not doing it on purpose…"

Tom sighed, exasperated.  "Exactly, Harry.  That's how fate works." 

He pulled the pillow over his face, as if the visual block would somehow dampen the emotional connection between them, but immediately regretted this decision.

"Ow," he said.  "What is this, a rock?"

***

Days went by, and Fleamont did not re-appear, which they took to be a good sign.  Septimus began showing up late for work, sometimes not at all, and when he was there, Harry noticed he spent a lot of time furtively scribbling in an all-too-familiar black notebook. 

Harry began to lose track of how long he had been trapped in the pensieve, and wondered if there wasn't some sort of Confundus charm baked into the breakfast slop which was slowly lobotomizing him.  In between laundry duty and cleaning the lavatories, he lounged on the bunkbed, bereft of his Quidditch companion, and largely ignored by Tom, whose chores and mysterious activities seemed to keep him out of his cell until well into the night. 

There was a brief flurry of activity when Rosier and his family were finally arrested, caught trying to flee to Argentina dressed as muggle peasants - apparently, nobody had warned them that codpieces had gone out of fashion in the 16th century, and were not even worn by rustic smallholding types even then. 

Most worryingly of all, the _Daily Prophet_ announced a truce in the war, to allow for a diplomatic congress to take place between the British Minister for Magic and the _Hexenkanzler_ of Germany, Gellert Grindelwald.  The Minister had made a speech following certain events in the wider war with Germany which had had a "disruptive impact" on wizarding Britain, advocating for peace in the hope that, by working more collaboratively with Grindelwald, Britain might be able to temper the more extreme aspects of his regime.  As part of the armistice deal, Dumbledore agreed to deport a group of refugees from the lands which had been conquered by Grindelwald, which by now spread out from Berlin to the old cities of the Hanseatic League in the north west, Russia in the east and as far south as Bulgaria. 

"Poor Dolohov…" Avery sighed, sadly.

"What do you think they mean by 'disruptive events'?" wondered Nott.  "This paper is always so mealy-mouthed when it comes to any sort of criticism of the Ministry."

The Death Eaters were a glum bunch these days; Nott and Rosier were never as quick with their jokes, and the usually garrulous Lestrange hardly spoke at all.  However, their despair only served to make Tom more determined.

That night, Harry felt himself roughly shaken awake to find Tom looming over him in the darkness.

"What -" Harry began, but Tom immediately clamped a hand over his mouth and put a finger to his lips.  He lowered himself down from the bunkbed and beckoned silently to Harry, who realised with some surprise that the cell door was open.

He followed Tom through the silent corridors into a part of the prison he had not been in before.  A sign on the door read _NO PRISONERS BEYOND THIS POINT_.  Tom ignored this and went in.  Harry followed after him, finding himself in a large room, not unlike the Mess Hall, but full of guards, sitting at several large tables.  Or rather, they had been sitting - now they were all slumped over, face-down in their half-eaten dinners.  An eerie silence reigned over the whole scene. 

Tom turned towards Harry with a look of eager expectance, not unlike a dog looking for praise from its owner after learning a new trick.

"You've killed them all!" gasped Harry.

Tom laughed. "Relax," he said.  "It's only Draught of Living Death.  Although, I can't vouch for those with weaker constitutions…"

Harry stared at him, appalled.

"Don't worry, Harry.  It was quite weak, anyway.  I had to make loads, and I was running out of sloth brain…" said Tom, sheepishly.

"Where did you get all of the stuff, anyway?"

Tom looked rather pleased with himself.  "While you were off playing jolly-broomsticks, _I_ was working hard in Potions Club…"

"Potions Club?  I didn't know there was a potions club…"

Tom grinned at Harry conspiratorially.  "I… convinced Weasley to have one set up."

"Ah… the Diary.  Of course… I should have known…" said Harry, shaking his head in mock disapproval but at the same time unable to suppress an admiring grin. 

"Considerably easier to do without a wand than the imperius curse, " said Tom with a degree of pride.  "Reliable, too - I always know I can count on myself."

"And where's Weasley now?  Did you poison him as well?"

"Oh no," said Tom.  "He's off freeing the others.  But I wanted to show you, personally, Roonil Wazlib - this is how a real criminal mastermind works."

"Well, you got a head start on me," said Harry.  "You began your career when you were still in nappies…. But I'll admit it, Voldemort.  I'm impressed." 

Tom gave a little bow, his hand on his heart. 

"So, how do we get off the island?" Harry asked.  "I imagine even Dumbledore realises the importance of anti-apparition charms for prisons…"

"We fly, of course," said Tom.  "Your broomstick will actually be useful for once.  But first, let's go and get our stuff - I can't look at myself in these god-awful stripes…"

"I think you look nice," said Harry, and Tom blushed scarlet.

Septimus, possessed by the memory of Tom's teenage self, had already opened all the store rooms and raided their contents for anything of value.  Harry's precious pocketful of change, however, was exactly as he had left it.  The two inmates stripped themselves of their regulation robes, rather self-consciously, and turned their backs to each other as they reapplied their respective personalities.  It felt good, and much less itchy, to have their own clothes back.  Most of all, Harry was glad to feel his wand in his hand again.

They turned to go, but Tom paused on the threshold. 

"Wait," he said.  He turned back towards the prison office behind the entrance desk.  " _Accio_ file!"  One of the filing cabinets started rattling, and burst open, and a slim volume bearing Voldemort's name floated through the air towards them.

"Are you going to destroy it?" asked Harry.

"Not at all," said Tom, smiling.  He plucked the file out of the air, set it open on the desk, and, availing himself of a quill that had been left out, crossed out "Mr" and wrote "Lord" in a neat, decisive hand.

"There," he said, with an expression of satisfaction. 

He glanced up at Harry, who met his gaze with one of shameless desire.  There was something about the whole situation that made him impossibly aroused, and there was no way of hiding it.

Tom looked him up and down languidly, almost indecently.  In the triumph of the moment, his carefully crafted shield of reserve melted away.

"Come here, Wazlib," he growled.

Harry came: first into Tom's fervent embrace, returning his warm kisses; and then again, with a desperate gasp, a few minutes later, into his trembling hand.


	14. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, so... first of all, many thanks for everyone who has given kind and/or constructive comments up until now... all much appreciated. Please do continue to comment and I really don't mind negativity if it can help me improve.
> 
> However, this note is mainly to serve as a ***TRIGGER WARNING*** for what follows, which includes some implications of "NON-CON" or even RAPE depending on how you interpret it. I don't really want to put it in the tags as it's not a key element of the story, it's not explicit, and definitely nothing to do with Harry and Tom's relationship, and it can even be skipped over without detriment to the story, but I personally thought it was necessary to illustrate a darker side to the Death Eaters. However I also don't want anybody to feel uncomfortable whilst reading what is essentially meant to be a light-hearted and fun story.

Tom, Harry, and the Death Eaters took five broomsticks between them from the gymnasium and took off into the stormy skies above Azkaban, giggling at the thought of the scenes of pure chaos that would ensue when the potion finally wore off.  Harry insisted on hauling the by now completely unconscious Septimus onto the front of his own broomstick and bringing him along.

"We can't just leave him," said Harry.  "He'll get into massive trouble when they find out what happened…”

 "Fine!" groaned Tom.  “But if I hear so much as a peep out of him…”  He left the threat hanging in the air, darkly.

Their destination was Fleamont's mansion in Godric's Hollow, which turned out to be rather different from the way Harry remembered  it.  The Potter residence was a sprawling, garish pile, of a kind of pink brick one used to find in Hollywood in those days, with overly manicured lawns and a pair of rearing marble hippogriffs at the entrance.

"It's hideous," said Lestrange, snobbishly, as they dismounted.

"Thanks," said Fleamont, coming out to greet them with arms open wide, all slick-hair and shiny-spats.  He was feeling much more himself again, after his nightmarish interlude in Azkaban.  "I designed it myself."

His marvellously well-stocked wine cellar was not so hard on the eye.  It was raided gleefully in the first flush of their newfound freedom; crates were brought up; somebody turned a gramophone on, and the chintzy drawing room was filled with the tinny, scratchy sound of a jazz orchestra.

_“If you ain't wrong, you're right_

_If it ain't day, it's night_

_If you ain't sure, you might_

_Gotta be this or that…”_

"1923 Chateau Margaux," said Nott, reading one of the labels approvingly through his monocle.  "Why Fleabag, perhaps you do have taste after all."

"I drink anything, really," said Fleamont, earnestly.  "I have an Elf who chooses for me… I don't really know the difference between all the… types..."

"Then we absolutely must educate you, my dear" said Avery, patting his shoulder.

To the Death Eaters' credit, the impromptu wine-tasting lesson started out reasonably seriously, but as time went on, the descriptions of the various supposedly detectable flavours became whimsical and more slurred, until they were all very florid indeed, Harry and Tom included.

“This one is very versatile… they call it the Bertie Botts of wines…”

“This one is sweet and springy, like a chocolate frog –“

“Whereas this one is dry, rather like Minerva McGonagall’s –“

“- sense of humour –“

In the meantime, Septimus, whom Harry had carefully laid out on one of the pink studded chesterfields, stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

"Wh- where am I?" he asked, looking around, dazed, at the inexplicably kitschy surroundings.

"Oh, hello there, old bean," said Fleamont, going past with another bottle of vintage in his hand.  "Welcome to Godric's Hollow."

Harry, who still felt a vague sense of friendliness towards the red-headed Order member due to his resemblance to Ron, took it upon himself to try to explain what had happened.  This would have been difficult at the best of times, but after eight glasses of wine it was pretty much impossible. Septimus stared at Harry, baffled. 

"So I said we should bring you with us – because even though it wasn’t you – it was the diary, pretending to be you – or, wait – no, it was you, but not _you_ you – it would have looked to everyone else like it was you…”

“We really couldn’t have done it without you, Weasley,” hiccupped Lestrange.  The rest of the group turned around and raucously toasted Septimus, who looked rather green, like he might faint again.

"Hurrah, Weasley!"

"Weasley, our saviour!"

"Weasley is our king!"

"Oh, Merlin," said Septimus, wiping his freckled forehead nervously.  "I'll never get that promotion, now.  And I'm a republican, by the way -"

Harry passed him a bottle of wine, and he took a long, grateful swig, straight from the neck. 

Fleamont thought he might be able to cheer him up, given his interest in muggle memorabilia, by showing him his vast collection of enchanted Rolls Royces; so the party all spilled out onto the vast manicured lawns towards the coach house.  This was a long, low building much plainer than the house, opening out onto a private drive.  The doors were opened by Fleamont’s cry of _alohomora_ , and they were greeted by the glare of gleaming metal and the acrid smell of petrol.

Septimus’ eyes shone as bright as the sterling silver hubcaps.  Temporarily forgetting his dejection, he flitted excitedly between the sleek six-cylinders, opening up the bonnets and poking around rather haphazardly in the wires.

The Death Eaters, although cultivating an affection of snobbery about the idea of motorcars, were secretly impressed by the flashy vehicles, and stood at a distance, bunched in an envious circle and muttering amongst themselves.

Septimus's ginger head popped up again from under the bonnet of one of the Phantom IIs.

"Can we take her for a spin?" he asked, eagerly.  "Please?"

"Well," said Fleamont, uncertainly.  "The thing is - I'm not really sure how -"

"I can drive," said Tom, suddenly, with confidence.  He pushed through the group of Death Eaters and joined Fleamont, Harry and Septimus next to the cabriolet.

Harry turned to him in surprise.  "You?  Really?"

"Yeah," said Tom, carelessly.  "I've seen people do it loads of times."

Harry frowned.  "I don't think it really works like that -"

"Nonsense, Harry," said Tom, setting his glass down and hopping behind the wheel.  "It's designed for muggles.  How hard could it be?"

Septimus and the Death Eaters all piled into the back, whilst Fleamont and Harry rode shotgun.  Tom considered the dashboard for a moment with narrowed eyes.  Then he pulled out his wand and stuck it in the ignition.

"Wait - " Harry said, apprehensively.

" _Accendio_ ," Tom said, ignoring him.

For a brief, awful, moment, Harry thought they were all about to go up in flames; instead, happily, only the ignition fired up and the car lurched forward with a jolt.  Tom put his foot down on the accelerator, and they burst through the door of Fleamont's garage and sped off down the street, where they only narrowly avoided a collision with a milk float.

"Shouldn't you be on the other side of the road?" Harry yelled, gripping the edge of his seat with white knuckles.

"Since when were you the expert?" said Tom, making a sharp U-Turn which left rubber tyre-marks all over the tarmac. "Which way is London?"

"It should be over that way," said Fleamont.  "I think."

"That's a hedge," said Tom.

Harry sighed, and explained that you generally had to follow the road until you came to a suitable turning point.

"How inefficient," Tom remarked.

Soon, however, they had set a course towards London, and on the long, straight, empty motorway Tom's erratic driving became less of a problem.  After a bit of fiddling they figured out how to get the top down; the Death Eaters, still swigging wine in the back seat, whooped with elation.

“ _Morsmordre_!”

A jet of emerald stars shot into the air like fireworks, forming the skull of the Dark Mark, with its serpentine tongue, which sparkled like a constellation against the inky black sky.

“Stop messing around, or we’ll get caught again,” snapped Tom, but his censure was half-hearted; warmed with wine, even he was not immune to the exhilaration of zipping along at 60mph, the wind in his hair.  He glanced at Harry, who was leaning back in his seat, smiling contentedly, eyes closed and arms behind his head, looking perfectly adorable. One of the green eyes opened a fraction.

“Eyes on the road, Riddle,” he said, grinning.

Finally they arrived in the great, smoky metropolis in the early hours of the morning.  After driving round a few of the sights, getting into a scrape with a taxicab and having to perform a confundus charm on a muggle police officer, the crew decided to drive to Charing Cross Road to see if the _Leaky Cauldron_ was still open.

Not long after they had passed Trafalgar Square, Tom hit the brakes and the car screeched to a halt.  There, in front of him, where the Leaky Cauldron should have been, a large pile of rubble loomed out of the dawn twilight.  Behind it, the crooked rooftops of Diagon Alley were just visible, looking strangely incongruous in the middle of wartime London.  They all looked at each other, eyes round and faces pale.

"I don't believe it…" breathed Harry.

They got out of the car slowly, cautiously, and clambered over the rubble into the alley.  Harry was amazed at the change from just a couple of weeks ago, when he and Tom had sat outside at a pavement café, eating ridiculous ice-creams.  Most of the shops were boarded-up, abandoned, and the whole street seemed drained of colour.  It was like a ghost town.

They wandered onto Knockturn, which seemed much the same apart from -

"Oh, no!" cried Tom, holding his hands up to his mouth.   "No, no, no…"

Borgin and Burke's was nothing but a burnt out shell.  There was an official Ministry notice pinned to the blackened door frame, explaining that the place of business had been "terminated" for dealing in contraband items and illegal magical implements.

"Barbarians…" said Tom, almost in tears.  "Don't they understand anything… appreciate anything…"

Lestrange put an arm around his shoulder.  "There, there, old boy.  You were only planning to stay there for a few months more, anyway, weren't you?"

"Yes, but… I can't bear to think of all that magical history, just destroyed… Rare books… antiques… Priceless magic…"

"Maybe they took out anything valuable _before_ they burnt the place to a crisp," said Avery, optimistically.

A scrambling noise behind them made them all turn around.  A girl in a brown coat and old-fashioned hat was stumbling over the rubble towards them.  A large camera hung around her neck, and she carried a notebook and pen.  She was pretty, Harry thought, and her lips were painted a deep red, after the style of the period.

She paused, staring at the group, nervously.  They stared back.

"Are you… wizards?" she said, at last, in a hestitant voice.

"Yeah," said Rosier, rudely.  "Aren't you?"

She shook her head.  "I'm a reporter… for _The Times_ … They sent me to see if… it was true, what people were saying."

"What are people saying?" asked Tom, quietly.

"That - that there's a coven of witches and wizards right here, in London…that they've been living here for centuries in secret, undetected… I came to see if there were any left… because… after that Luftwaffe bomb…"

"Luftwaffe bomb…?" echoed Harry, feeling numb.  It was 1945, the very end of the war, he had a feeling the bombing should have been over by now, although his knowledge of muggle history was sketchy at best.

"Well, yes," the reporter said, coming closer.  "That's how… well, the ones that they found… were mostly dead… but just from the number of shops and buildings… I was sure there would be more… Hiding somewhere…”

Harry felt sick.

“So, can you do magic…?" the girl asked, brightly.

"That's not your concern," snapped Nott.  "We don’t want people like you sticking their noses where they don't belong -"

"Just one photo!" said the girl, clutching her camera desperately.  "Just one photo of - something - and I'll leave you alone, I promise -"

Harry, Fleamont and Septimus looked at each other, uncertainty and confusion plastered across each of their pale faces.  The Death Eaters, however, began to exchange mysterious, smirking glances.

"What will you give us in return?" asked Rosier, slyly.

"Well I - I don’t have much money - but - if my story sells - I can give you a cut -"

Avery laughed.  "We don't want your money, muggle.  We were thinking of something more… fun…"

“Fun…” the girl asked, confused.  “I don’t think I quite… maybe it’s better if I just go…” She started backing away, but Rosier disapparated, reappearing behind her shoulders and catching hold of her.

“Go?  But we were just getting started…”  He leaned forward and whispered into her ear.  “There are some ways in which we wizards are just like muggle men, you know…”

“Even better, I’d say,” leered Lestrange.

The girl whimpered in fright, and Harry, who until that moment had been staring in dumb shock without fully realising what was going on, exploded with disgust.

“Stop it!” he cried.  “Leave her alone!”

Nott raised an eyebrow.  “What’s the matter?  She’s just a muggle.”

“A well-executed memory charm and she won’t even remember a thing tomorrow morning,” said Avery, grinning maliciously.

“ _What_?!” said Harry.  “I can’t even – just _stop,_ will you?  Can’t you see she’s scared?”

“What’s it to you, anyway?” said Lestrange, angrily.  “I’m getting sick of you, Potter.  Just because you’re Voldemort’s fucking _bumboy_ doesn’t mean you can just waltz in and start telling us what to do!”

He gripped his wand.  “Let her go, or so help me…”

Bumboy, really.  _If only it were actually true_ , he thought to himself. 

Glancing at Tom, he was surprised to him staring blankly into space, chewing his lip as if debating something internally.  He was miles away, lost in thoughts of Heinkel bombers, spitfires and muggle engineering. He had known that this day would come, that their world, the hated other world he thought he had managed to escape, would come crashing into this one, with their roaring engines and deadly shrapnel. He just hadn't expected it to be quite so soon, and he and his followers to be so weak and unprepared... He wondered who they were, the unfortunate wizards, going about their day of shopping, blissfully unaware of the hellish, unnatural battle going on in the skies above their heads, and their own imminent doom. It could have been any of those people he saw on the way to buy breakfast every morning, before opening up the shop... it could have been him, had he not been in Azkaban...

“…Tom?”

 “Hmm… Don’t call me that in public…” said Tom, absent-mindedly. 

Harry’s blood was boiling now.  “Why not, it’s your name, isn’t it?  I can’t believe you would just stand by and watch this –“

At that moment, the girl ducked under Rosier’s arm and made a break for freedom, clattering away through the piles of debris, hat askew.

“She’s getting away!” screeched Lestrange, seizing his wand from his pocket.  Quick as a flash, Harry readied his own weapon, his trusty holly wand. He was so glad he had had it with him when he had fallen into the pensieve - it felt like his only friend from the other side.

“Don’t you dare,” he said.

“Or what?” said Lestrange nervously, hesitating slightly.

“Or this,” said Fleamont, with an expert flick of his wand.  “ _Puspurum_!”  There was a bang and Lestrange began violently vomiting noxious green pus.  From behind him, Harry heard the click and whirr of a camera shutter.

“Harry, look out!” cried Fleamont.  Rosier had raised his wand in Harry’s direction, but Septimus stepped in deftly with his taser-spell.

“Take that, you brute,” he said, with an air of satisfaction.

Soon there was a full-on brawl between Harry, Fleamont and Septimus on one side, and the Death Eaters on the other. It raged for a good few minutes, with Harry dimly aware of the reporter’s camera clicking away the whole time.

The skirmish was drawn to an abrupt end, however, when Lestrange fired an engorging hex at Harry. He ducked, causing the spell to hit Tom, who was still lost in his own thoughts to be paying any attention, clean in the face.  He gave a cry of surprise and brought his hands up to his nose, which was rapidly swelling to twice the normal size, streaming with blood. 

Lestrange turned pale.  "My Lord - forgive me - I didn't mean -"

"Lestradge, you fool!  Whaddon earth are you playig at -"

"I was trying to hit Harry…"

Tom shot furious glances back and forth between them. "Harry?  Why?" 

"We were only trying to teach that nosey muggle girl a lesson, and he -"

"Bosey buggle girl?"

"The one we were just talking to…" said Lestrange, helplessly.  "You spoke to her yourself…"

Tom stared at him blankly, his inflated nose still cupped in his hands. 

"You must've been daydreaming again, my Lord," said Avery, helpfully.

"I was thinkig," snapped Tom. "You should try it yourself some tibe, Avery, if you do indeed have a brain.  As for you, Lestradge, I have half a bind to burder you where you stand… but Lord Voldebort is berciful…"

"Thank you, my Lord," said Lestrange, his eyes shining in gratitude.

"I can't afford to lose any of you to infighting at this point in time… You've seen what sort of a serious situation we are in… We must forbulate a plad of attack… Fleabag, we will contidue to use your place as a base for now."

Fleamont looked like he might protest, but Septimus elbowed him sharply in the side with a fearful shake of his head. 

"We're all outlaws now; we don't stand a chance by ourselves," he hissed, and Fleamont reluctantly acquiesced.

Harry approached Tom, and managed to prise his hands away from his swollen nose in order to assess the damage.  It was a bloody mess, and he did his best to daub at some of the blood with a pocket handkerchief. All the same, it was more than a little comical to see Tom’s usually perfectly proportioned nose blown to cartoonish proportions.

"What are you laughing at?" Tom glowered, angrily.

"Nothing, Lord Voldebort," said Harry, and quickly ducked to dodge a hex, for the second time that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to listen to the song on Fleamont's gramophone, click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2urvflUdLlw


	15. Dark Lord

Given Tom's injury, and his own (albeit limited) experience with enchanted cars, Harry volunteered to drive the motley crew back to Godric's Hollow. 

The journey back was very different to the one into town.  Barely a word was exchanged between the Gryffindor and Slytherin sides.  Tom stared out of the window, silently, cradling his nose; the Death Eaters bickered amongst themselves as usual; Septimus chewed on his fingers worriedly; after a while, Fleamont fell asleep, and began to snore loudly.

On their return, Tom strode into the house to find a mirror, not trusting anyone with his face but himself.  The rest of them stood around nervously, talking in low voices.

“Thanks for your help back there,” Harry said to Fleamont with a grateful smile.  He was liking his grandfather more and more as time went on; underneath his mildly surprised demeanor, he had the typical courage of a Gryffindor, and more than a little of the Potter family cunning thrown in.

“Don’t mention it, Harry,” said Fleamont, clapping his shoulder.  “You’re the only grandson-from-another-dimension I’ve got, after all…”  He yawned and stretched.  “Well, that’s me done for the night… I’m off to Bedfordshire…”

Septimus, as the sobering light of dawn filtered through the high, latticed windows, was evidently still trying to process his involvement in the mass breakout. 

"I still don't understand _why_ I did it," he muttered to himself.  "I can see how - it all makes sense from a logistical point of view - but not _why_ -"

"Sometimes we make decisions based on instincts we don't fully understand," said Harry, patting his arm sympathetically.  He could very well have been talking about himself.

"I must say, I never knew I had it in me…  Still, it's rather fun, breaking the rules sometimes, isn't it?  Thrilling, if you will."

"Yeah," said Harry, nodding in agreement.  "It is."

A collective groan from the Death Eaters caused them both to look up.  Their Dark Marks were burning a deep red, and a few of the Death Eaters winced in pain.

"I don't see why he can't just come and get us," Nott complained.   “He’s literally just upstairs.”

They began to disapparate; that is, apart from Avery, who evidently had still not passed his test. He began to make his way on foot to one of the doors leading off from the hallway to the left.  Harry grabbed his arm and suggested they go together, not being able to travel via Dark Mark himself.

They climbed several staircases, and eventually came to a large door decorated with a _chinois_ pattern.  Avery went to knock, but Tom opened it before his knuckles touched the wood.  Happily, his nose was back to normal, and still attached to his face…

"Late, as usual, Avery," he said, curtly.  Then he looked at Harry.  "What are you doing here?"

"Er -," said Harry, rather surprised at being asked.  "I just wanted to hear what you were going to say."

"Are you a Death Eater?" asked Tom, sharply.

"Well, no, but -" 

"But what?"  Tom eyed him suspiciously.  "Do you want to be?"

"Er -," said Harry, uncertainly.  Of course he didn’t want to be a Death Eater, especially after what had happened earlier that evening, but he also wanted to be privy to whatever they were plotting.  He had come this far, and he'd be damned if he would just meekly stand back now.

"Well," said Harry.  "I _am_ a junior auror, and there's no better training for that than to infiltrate a gang of dark wizards."

He was touched by the spark of genuine delight that crossed Tom’s face at this suggestion.  It had been, he supposed, one of Voldemort's first requests to him, when they had met again when Harry was eleven and Voldemort was a weird parasite attached to Quirrell's head (it had not, of course, seemed such an attractive prospect then).

Tom wiped the inadvertent smile from his face almost instantaneously.

"All right," he said, in a guarded tone.  "Come in."

The Death Eaters were sitting in a semi-circle round the four-poster bed, wearing their signature black robes and masks.  Tom himself wore a trailing black cape, which emanated out from where he stood like a dark puddle.  It was all quite impressive, but for the fact that it the coven was taking place in Fleamont's ugliest guest bedroom, and a couple of the Death Eaters, lacking chairs, were making do with balancing rather precariously on chintz pouffés.  Harry, feeling rather out of place in his jacket and jeans, sat down on the floor.

Tom stood in the centre of the semi-circle, his arms folded in front of him, his eyes closed and his head bowed as if in prayer. He stood like that for a while, until the hush of expectancy began to falter and some of his audience members started to fidget.

Tom opened his eyes, and Harry caught their dark red gleam.

"My friends," he began, in a hushed, sibilant voice, quite different from the one he used on a daily basis.  "My friends… dark times indeed are upon us.  The wizarding world has been laid low by those who would seek to do it harm… We, the living custodians of the most ancient power of magic, have been driven from our homes, arrested - our property stolen from us, our rights denied… by our age-old enemies, muggles, and their allies the mudbloods and blood traitors…

"It is these last that pose the greatest threat… For, jealous of our purity, they seek to eradicate us, to deny us what is rightfully ours… They say that there is no difference between us and them, that we may freely fraternize with muggles, form friendships… even mate with them… After all, we are all human, are we not?"

There was a loud noise of disapproval from the assembled Death Eaters.  Only Harry remained silent, frowning, a bad taste in his mouth.  He hated any of this blood purity talk, but the growing intensity of his feelings for Tom as a person had almost made him forget the despicable views Lord Voldemort had stood for.  Now it all came rushing back, and he stared at Tom in disgust; Tom, for his part,  ignored him, and instead gazed triumphantly around his appreciative audience of supporters.

"Of course not, my friends!  It is a lie!  A foul lie, spread by envy and hostility!  We tried to live alongside muggles, for centuries - and where did it lead?  To hatred, persecution, murder… What has changed?

"Nothing, my friends - only that muggles are more powerful than ever before.  Harnessing the occult - that which they refer to as science, the knowledge of physics and chemistry, they have created their own unnatural form of magic to further their ever destructive ends… You have seen them, flying high above them, with their engines coughing out filth and smog, dropping bombs on us… killing us…  this will only get worse, as time goes on, unless they are stopped.

"I do not pretend that, in our isolation, we have grown comfortable - complacent - apathetic, even, to this threat.  This cannot go on.  We must change, and we must get stronger.  We must seek new methods of defence, and offence, as they have done.  Let nothing be deemed _unforgiveable_!  The only thing unforgiveable is inaction in the face of the threat of annihilation.  That is the basis on which we came together, all those years ago, in the Slytherin common room, under the shield of our patron, the great Salazar Slytherin himself.  It is said that the locket he wore contained the power of foresight… he alone knew what we would face in years to come… but for this he was exiled, driven away…

"My friends, unfortunately, the day of reckoning has come much sooner than even we anticipated… We have heard tell of an unholy alliance, between that insane schemer, Gellert Grindelwald, the _Hexenkanzler_ , and our very own Minister for Magic, Albus Dumbledore… That their aim is to tear down the Statute of Secrecy, which has afforded us certain protections all these years, and reveal all to muggles… they are joined in this purpose by that litany of mudbloods, muggle-lovers and blood traitors they call the Order of the Phoenix…

We have seen that certain muggles are already aware of our presence… Grindelwald has made no effort to hide himself from their eyes, and given the current armistice, news has begun to trickle over from Germany.  This cannot be allowed to continue.  The wizarding world needs time to recover from centuries of sluggishness… No doubt, one day, there will be a reckoning, but it will be on our terms, when we are ready to face them.

"You know how dedicated I have been to the cause of my ancestor, Salazar Slytherin.  It is for this reason that I, Lord Voldemort, am making a vow before you today to oppose all enemies and traitors to magic, and those who seek union with the world of the muggles.  It is a mere fantasy to believe that we can ever share anything with them.  I will not stop until Grindelwald and his associates are destroyed.  There is no _greater good_ \- only magic - magic, above all else!"

The semi-circle of Death Eaters exploded into whoops and cheers.  Tom smiled with satisfaction; the smile faded slightly, however, when he met Harry's stony gaze.

"What?" he said, in his normal voice.

"You know what," said Harry.  He got up to leave.  The Death Eaters gradually stopped clapping and looked from Harry to Tom, their eyes wide with curiosity. 

Pink spots of rage had started to appear on Tom's pale cheeks. 

"Where do you think you're going?  Come back here -"

"No," said Harry, striding out. 

“Don’t you dare walk out on me –“  Tom began, but Harry slammed the door, cutting him off.

Outside the room, he paused for a moment with his back against the _chinois_ print, sighing angrily.  He kicked over a potted verbena which happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

He was annoyed with himself, mainly.  What had he expected, tagging along to a meeting of Death Eaters?  He had fought a war against them, for Pete's sake, precisely because they stood for everything he was opposed to…

…or did they?  He wandered the corridors of the Potter mansion aimlessly, mulling over Tom's speech in his mind.  Parts of it had made sense, hadn't it?  When he had fought the Death Eaters, had he been fighting the ends, or the means, or both?  It had always been as much about the personal, as the ideological…

… but no - no.  It had definitely been ideological, too.  Blood supremacy was a twisted, crazy idea.  His best friend Hermione - his own mother - they'd both been brilliant           witches, who loved and respected the magical world… both had made great sacrifices to protect it… and they weren't exceptional.  They were the rule.

He turned the handle of one of the doors off the corridor, and found himself in another bedroom - smaller and cosier than the one Voldemort had chosen for the Death Eater gathering.  On the chimneypiece there were a few photographs of a small, scrawny boy, with atrociously messy black hair; Harry did a double take, before realising it must have been Fleamont, in pre- _Sleekeazy_ days.  He smiled, sadly.  It was a weird feeling, being the same age as one's grandfather … Suddenly, the sense of being out of place, and lost, hit him hard in the stomach and he wondered if he would ever get back to normality…

There was a knock at the door, and a by-now familiar voice intoned his name.  “…Harry?”

"Go away," said Harry. 

The door opened, and Tom poked his head in gingerly, as though he half expected to be blasted by a _furnunculus_ jinx at any moment.  He looked around, and seeing Harry angry but unarmed, edged into the room.

"Why do you insist on embarrassing me in front of my friends?"

"Because I hate them, and you, and your stupid ideas,'" spat Harry. "You disgust me."

"They're not just ideas, Harry," said Tom, with a self-important sigh.  "It's the truth -"

"It's not the truth!  Muggle-born wizards are just as good, and just as trustworthy as purebloods are.  You – you should know that!  You're not even pureblood yourself!"

Tom’s face twisted momentarily into an ugly expression of fury; but as usual, he regained himself quickly.

"I wouldn't say _I_ was particularly trustworthy, would you?" said Tom, with only the merest trace of bitterness in his voice.

"Well, that's your own fault," Harry snapped.  "It's nothing to do with who your father was.  Stop making excuses for your own shoddy behaviour.”

Tom closed his eyes swallowed, clearly making an Herculean effort to remain calm and reasonable, but Harry could feel a dangerous, painful throb beginning to build in his scar.

"Harry - it's an objective fact that mud – muggle-borns vote consistently to relax the statute of secrecy, and they were instrumental in Grindelwald's rise in Germany…"

"So what if they were?" said Harry, angrily.  "Grindelwald himself is a pureblood.  And even if muggle-borns have more of a reason to support him, sometimes you just have to trust people, give them the benefit of the doubt… otherwise it becomes self-fulfilling, doesn't it?  You of all people should know that!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean - look at you!  I know how Dumbledore never gave you a chance, just because he caught you stealing at the orphanage, and listened to the gossip of an old lady who hated you -"

Tom snarled.  "Dumbledore hated me because he saw a threat in me – he saw my power -"

"You believe that if you want to.  I just think he's a judgmental prick."

Something in this last admission seemed to resonate with Tom, and Harry could feel the destructive tide of his anger subsiding slightly; the pain which had been building in his scar grew less.  As the fury began to dissipate, Harry could see much more clearly what lay behind it, as if the anger itself was a protective wall, a barrier like the one that had existed until very recently behind the _Leaky Cauldron_ , only instead of a world of magic and colour it concealed only sadness, pain and disappointment.

"He was right, at any rate," said Tom, pathetically.  “I _was_ pretty evil, even then.”

Harry’s anger had dissipated too, and he gazed at Tom, full of compassion for that hard-faced, hateful, abandoned little creature Dumbledore had encountered at Wool’s orphanage.

"You were just a child… a little kid.  What threat could you possibly have posed, at eleven years old?  Nobody is born evil."

"Maybe not," said Tom, quietly.  "But some people might be destined to be.”

Harry sighed and shook his head, frustrated.  "There you go again with that whole fate thing.  Take it from someone who has had a prophecy hanging over his head since the day he was born - destiny doesn't mean anything unless you _let_ it."

"Then why do we study the stars?  Why does the Department of Mysteries guard prophecies so carefully?  Some stories are already written, Harry, and written long ago… I was the first direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin to come to Hogwarts in centuries.  I was born for this - to finish what he started…"

Harry raised an eyebrow.  "Do you really believe that?"

"…Yes."

Harry’s heart ached.  He knew exactly what that felt like.  The Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the Scar, the Prophecy, from the age of eleven his life had been mapped out for him, and he had felt powerless to choose a different path.  He pictured Tom as a child, alone and friendless, finally discovering his life had a purpose, a meaning… and clinging to it, no matter how far into the darkness it took him.

Harry took Tom gently by the shoulders.  “You have a choice, you know.  I was once told, by… someone, that it is our choices that show what we truly are.”

Tom looked at him sadly.  He suddenly looked very young again, nothing like the masterful Lord Voldemort that had given the speech earlier; Harry could almost see the little lost boy inside, still trying desperately to figure out who, and what, he was.

“But if I don’t have this… what else is there?” he said, in a small voice.

“Oh, Tom…”  Harry felt he could almost cry.  He squeezed Tom’s shoulders tightly, wanting to shake him back and forth, violently, as if somehow he could shake out all the idiotic self-importance and the equally idiotic self-hatred and make him understand his true value…

“I know how it feels, you know - to be unwanted.  When you find people who actually do want you – and you think it’s because they need you for something, and you don't want to let them down, because you keep thinking - what if you end up alone again?  But… you have to be yourself, in the end; you’ll go crazy if you try to live your life based on other people’s expectations…”

“Isn’t that what you did?”

Harry paused, slightly stumped.  _Touché_.

“Well,” he said, after a while.  “In a way, I did - but I also knew that deep down, I wasn’t this great legendary hero, like everyone thought…  I was just Harry.  I couldn’t wait for the war to be over, so I could go back to being myself again… what will you do, when this is all over?”

Tom looked at him for a moment with an odd expression, there was a sharp, unfamiliar _zing_ in his scar, and for a split second, Harry thought something extraordinary was about to happen. 

But whatever it was – whatever he had felt in his scar, and whatever flicker he had seen – or thought he saw – in Tom’s eyes was gone just as quickly as it came.  Instead, he twisted his mouth into a mirthless smile. 

“Oh, I have plans, Harry, don’t worry.  And none of those involve being ‘just Tom’.  I’ve never been _just_ anything – that’s where we differ.”

With a sinking feeling, Harry let go of Tom’s shoulders, feeling that some opportunity had been lost, somewhere, that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  He smiled sadly.

“Yeah, I suppose it is.” 

Tom yawned and looked at his pocket-watch.

"It's 7 AM," he said.

"Who's fault is that?” said Harry. “I’ve been trying to go to bed for the past two hours.”

"You and your obsession with sleep," said Tom, dismissively, gliding past him.  “I’ve never quite understood it myself…” He kicked off his shoes and sat on the bed, which bounced slightly under his weight.  Tom paused for a moment, thoughtfully, and then deliberately bounced again, slightly harder.  An expression of delicious pleasure slowly bloomed on his handsome face.

"Ah!  So soft… I didn’t know beds could feel like this."  He flopped down onto the feather pillow, looking positively gleeful. “I take back what I just said, Harry.  Sleeping here must be heavenly… really though, it’s like lying on a cloud.”

Harry gazed at him, marvelling at how one person could contain so many contradictions, and how a tiny grain of innocence could still survive, buried deep inside such a broken, malevolent soul.  He was both revolted and hopelessly attracted by him… There were times he felt he could quite happily have killed him, and everything he stood for, in cold blood; and there were others, like now, when he would have willingly laid down his life to protect him.


	16. Those cunning folks

When Harry awoke later that afternoon, he found that Tom had already out of bed and sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with several of the day’s newspapers spread out in front of him.  The _Daily Prophet_ ’s headline screamed hysterically about the Statute of Secrecy being in tatters due to the machinations of a network of Grindelwald’s spies.  The ringleader, of course, was the notorious Roonil ‘Scarface’ Wazlib, who had broken out of Azkaban and was now terrorizing the streets of London with a gang of like-minded miscreants. 

The tone of panic was, however, did not seem to be quite justified on a review of the muggle press.  An article somewhat sensationally entitled _Wand Wielding Warlocks on the Streets of London!_ had appeared rather far back in the late edition of _The Times_ , containing several grainy photos of what looked like a group of eccentrically-dressed teenagers throwing sticks at each other.  The _Telegraph_ had failed to report on the incident at all, although one of the letters to the editor remarked on a strange new constellation that had appeared briefly over Reading, convinced it was some new plot by the Germans to discombobulate the British navy.

“This Roonil Wazlib thing is getting out of hand,” said Harry.

“Isn’t it?” said Tom.  “It’s ridiculous that they think you’re the leader.  Listen to this: _One young follower, aged around thirteen and known only as Lord Vol au Vent, came away from the scene badly injured by an engorgio jinx_ … Thirteen, really?”

“It must be a typo,” said Harry, trying extremely hard not to burst out laughing.  “They use those automatic quills at the _Prophet_ , don’t they?”

***

Lord Vol au Vent set up his formal headquarters in Henry Potter's old study, amidst oddities such as shrunken heads, stuffed kneazles and historical copies of _Marchbanks’ Wizengamot Debates_.  He cleared the clutter aside with a sweep of his wand, sending up a cloud of dust which made Harry sneeze violently.

On the desk, he laid out a large map of Europe, alongside which he placed various _Daily Prophet_ cuttings describing Grindelwald’s unstoppable march across the continent, ending with the armistice and the diplomatic congress in London, which was due to take place in just over two weeks’ time.  He had also collected various muggle news articles reporting on the world war, and he spread these out too, with Harry and the other Death Eaters watching his preparations in silence. 

Finally, he sat back and stared at everything, his fingers forming a pale steeple.  There was a long pause.

“So,” he said, finally, placing his wand over London on the map, which lit up with a rather unflattering image of Dumbledore in minitature, squinting evilly through half-moon spectacles.  “Here we have our own dear Minister for Magic, plotting in secret under the Cloak of Invisibility… and hereabouts -” his wand hovered over Ypres, in Belgium, where a chaotic, cackling figure appeared with blond curls and a tiny Elder Wand, “- we have the German chancellor, the Mr Hyde to Dumbledore’s Dr Jeckyll…  It’s so obvious now, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before Harry came along… They're going to meet here, in the banqueting hall of the Ministry, at the gala ball to open the congress."

“He’s going to hide Dumbledore’s doctor’s jacket?” Avery whispered to Lestrange, out of the side of his mouth.

Lestrange shrugged. 

Tom continued, ignoring them.

 “Dumbledore was supposed to be working with the muggle Prime Minister to defeat Grindewald.  But what a lot of wizards don’t realise is that the muggle war was actually winding down before Dumbledore got into power – Germany seemed almost on the point of capitulating - but now – _magically_ – they seem to have recovered – see?”

He indicated the muggle headlines on the war which continued to rage, showing no signs of stopping despite the fact that autumn was now drawing in. 

“So you think Dumbledore and Grindelwald are fuelling the muggle war?” asked Nott.

“They must be,” said Tom, with a grim expression.

“But why…?”

Tom ran his hands uneasily through the neat black waves of his hair.

“I don’t know – there could be all sorts of reasons.  I suppose, in one way, it’s a cover for whatever they are doing… or perhaps they want to weaken the muggles, before they attempt to take over in earnest.”

 “…So what can we do?” asked Rosier.

Tom paused.

“I think…” he said, slowly.  “…That we should try to take the Elder Wand.  That’s clearly the most important Hallow.  Without that – they will be a lot more vulnerable.”

Harry wasn’t convinced.  “Tom - haven’t you read the _Beedle the Bard_?  The Invisibility Cloak is the most powerful Hallow, the Elder Wand is just an illusion…”

Tom sighed impatiently, rolling his eyes.  “That’s just a story, Harry…”

“It’s not!” Harry protested.  “Well, I mean, it might be, but the moral still rings true.  And how  do you propose getting your hands on  the Elder Wand in the first place?  I know you’re good, Tom, but I’m not sure even you could withstand a full-blown dark wizard with an all-powerful wand…”

Tom frowned and reddened slightly.   He hated being reminded of his own weaknesses, especially in front of the Death Eaters, but he knew Harry was right.

“Hmph.  There must be another way to get it…” he said, thoughtfully.  “We could steal it, somehow…”

“Maybe,” Harry said.  “Although I doubt he lets it out of his sight much – he probably even takes it with him into the toilet…”

Tom looked up suddenly, and a slow smile began to spread across his handsome features.

“Yes, I bet he does…!” he said, his eyes shining darkly as they met Harry’s rather baffled gaze. “Harry, you are a _genius_!” 

The Death Eaters exchanged incredulous glances at hearing such high praise falling from the lips of their usually terse and supercilious Dark Lord.  They scowled at Harry enviously.

Harry blinked.  “Er – what?  You’re not actually proposing to steal the Elder Wand while Grindwald is on the loo… are you?”

Tom was positively beaming now, flushed with gleeful malice.  “But you know what they have in lavatories, don’t you Harry… _Pipes_ …!”

"The Basilisk!" cried Lestrange happily, clapping his hands with glee.

"Correct," said Tom, narrowing his eyes contentedly and looking ever-so-slightly reptilian.    "We can invite her to the ball… she always does make such a stunning impression."

"Hurrah!" said Avery, bouncing up and down on his chair excitedly.

"Excellent!" said Rosier.  "I can see it now - elegant music - fine wine - and bodies -bodies everywhere…"

Tom frowned.  "Don't get carried away," he said.  "The Basilisk is not invulnerable, you know.  She won't do well out in the open.  This is going to be a precision hit, like last time…"

"Aw," said Rosier, dejectedly.

Harry considered all this for a moment.  "But how will we get her into the Ministry?" he asked, remembering their last conversation on the subject.

Tom smiled at him.  "Excellent question, Harry… I always thought, if I needed to get anything important out of Hogwarts quickly - I would use a portkey.  I made a couple of experiments at school, and there seems to be a definite loophole in the protective charms in that respect."

"I'll say," said Harry, remembering the Triwizard final.

"The problem lies in getting her to the precise location we need without being spotted… The Ministry will be crawling with members of the Order by now, and portkeys are always rather approximate.  However, since we last spoke, I have been doing some digging… purely out of interest… and, Lestrange, you may be pleased to note that there is a disused branch of the Central Line running right underneath the Ministry of Magic.  The Ministry of Transport had no idea - you know how the various government departments never actually talk to each other - until the trains kept breaking down due to magical interference, so they had to re-route the line."

Harry listened carefully to Tom's words and beamed with admiration. 

" _You're_ the genius," he said, causing Tom to turn slightly pink.

"Well - it was nothing, really -"

The Death Eaters all rolled their eyes.

"You two are so cute," drawled Nott.  "It's positively sick-making."

"Shut up," said Tom.

"How will we get into Hogwarts in the first place?" asked Avery.  "We just escaped from Azkaban, it's not like we can just stroll in for a casual high school reunion."

"What about old Sluggy?" suggested Lestrange. "I bet he wouldn't snitch.  He always had a soft spot for you, Voldemort."

"There wasn't anything _soft_ about it," sniggered Rosier. "Quite the opposite -"

"All right, all right," said Tom, turning a deeper shade of pink than before.  "Grow up, will you, Rosy.  Good suggestion, Lestrange.  Although I'm not exactly sure of his loyalty… he was good friends with Dumbledore, as I recall…"

"Just deliver yourself, naked, in a huge box of crystallised pineapple," said Avery.  "He'll do _anything_ you want."

Lestrange, Rosier and Nott threw back their heads, cackling wildly, and even Harry couldn't help cracking a smile, having been privy to a couple of Slughorn's choice memories.

Tom scowled at them all with narrowed eyes; then, seeing that the laughter did not subside, he drew out his wand calmly, and pointed it at Avery.

" _Crucio_."

The peals of Avery's laughter quickly dissolved into gurgles of pain.

"Argh - my Lord - please  - a mere jest -"

Tom let him suffer for a few moments longer, before lowering his wand, at which point the offending Death Eater slumped  forward, wheezing.  The others were silent now, staring at Avery horrified, none of them daring to come to his aid.

"Does anyone else have any jokes they'd like to share with the group at my expense?" asked Tom, with a pleasant smile.  Everyone shook their heads vehemently.

"Good," said Tom.  "I am sorry I had to do that Avery; I shall take your suggestion on board, at least as far as the crystallised pineapple is concerned.  You can go out to the village and buy some for me, but for Salazar's sake make sure you have a suitable disguise.  Lestrange, go and get me some decent parchment and a quill.  The rest of you may go away and amuse yourselves until I require your services again - apart from you, Harry, please - and remember, not a word of any this to Fleabag or Weasley, they'll only squeal."

The Death Eaters bowed courteously and traipsed  out of the room, throwing a few suspicious glances in Harry's direction, but not daring to comment.  Avery, hobbling slightly, had to lean on Lestrange's arm for support.

When the door closed behind them, Harry turned towards Tom with a look of reproach.

"I can't believe you just used the cruciatus curse on Avery.  He was only making a joke!"

"He was being disrespectful."

"So?  You said these guys weren't your servants, and friends don't have to be respectful!  That's the whole point!"

"Whatever," said Tom, shaking his head in annoyance, as though Harry were an irritating insect buzzing around it.  "They don't mind…"

"I think they do, Tom!" said Harry.  "It's all very well getting people to do what you say because they're scared of you, but when things go wrong, they'll only stick by you if they actually _like_ you…"

"But things won't go wrong.  You should stop being such a pessimist, Harry."

"You should stop being so arrogant!" cried Harry, frustratedly.  "God, you're so annoying."  He sighed.  "What did you want me to stay behind for, anyway?"

"Put your arm out."

Harry looked at him, confused.  "My arm?  What for?"

"Just put it out.  The left one, please.  And roll up your sleeve while you're at it."

"Huh? But -" Suddenly the realisation dawned on him, and he jumped backwards, hugging his hands under his armpits.  "Oh.  Oh, no.  No, I am not getting the Dark Mark -"

"But you said you wanted to be a Death Eater!" protested Tom.

"Yes - well -" Harry spluttered. "That was before…"

"Before what?"

"Before you made that horrible speech about crushing mud- I mean, muggleborns - and before I just watched you torture your own friend for no reason -"

Harry was truly shocked at Tom's suggestion.  Was he really so ignorant of Harry's feelings, his principles?  Tom gazed at him stonily for a few moments; then suddenly his expression changed.

"I won't go after mudbloods anymore if you don't want me to," he said, gazing up at Harry demurely from under his long eyelashes.  "You matter much more to me than that…"

There was something about Tom's face when he did that - maybe it was the slight pout of his lips, or the curve of his brows - which tugged at Harry's heartstrings.  He hesitated, unsure. 

"Are you - do you really mean that?"

"Of course…  Just give me your arm…"

Harry started to relax a little, lowering his hands from where they had been wrapped tightly around his chest.  Still, there was a little niggling sensation in the back of his mind…

"You're lying…"

Tom looked hurt.  "No I'm not!  I told you, Harry… I really like you…  This way, we'll always be able to contact each other,  speak to each other, even when we're far apart… Wouldn't you like that?"

"Yes…" said Harry, feeling confused.  "I mean - no.  I don’t know."  Tom made it sound so attractive… but how could he ever show his face in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement again with Lord  Voldemort's signature scrawled halfway up his arm?

"I can't," he said, in what he hoped was a firmer tone of voice.  "It wouldn't be right… Stop trying to… persuade me.  You're so… you're so…" 

He faltered, forgetting what he was trying to say as he gazed into Tom's deep, dark eyes.

"So what?"

"So _handsome_ ," sighed Harry.   If he never had to look at anything else but Tom's angelic face for the rest of his life, he was sure he would be quite content… He felt Tom's fingers close around his wrist, and looked down, confused.  How had that happened?

“Just relax.  This won’t hurt a bit.”

Tom learned over Harry’s forearm with a look of concentration, first of all tracing an outline of the design with the smooth tip of his wand.  It felt oddly intimate: Harry could feel the gentle brush of Tom’s breath against the sensitive skin of his inner forearm, and the ends of his hair tickling his wrist; then suddenly the tip of the yew wand turned red hot, and Harry yelped in pain.

“Oww!”

“Sh, keep still,” said Tom, without looking up.

***

Finally, it was done, and Tom sat back to inspect his handiwork.

“This is one of my better ones,” he said, judiciously.  “I made an extra effort, for you… the swelling should go down after a few days, at least.”

“Oh, good,” said Harry, staring at the angry red welt on his arm in disbelief, trying to imagine the look on Kingsley’s face if he were ever to see it.

“This means a lot to me, you know.”

Harry brought his eyes up again to meet Tom’s gaze.  It was cautious, but earnest, and ever-so-slightly vulnerable, an unspoken question lingering in the dark eyes.

“I know,” said Harry, simply. 

Tom bent forward again and pressed his lips softly, reverently against Harry’s newly branded forearm.  Harry’s heart lurched, and his scar was flooded with an indescribably pleasurable sensation.  He jerked Tom towards him across the desk, sending the carefully laid-out newspaper cuttings flying, and found his mouth with his own. He kissed him with a greedy urgency, catching Tom’s lip against his teeth and winding the soft dark curls in his fingers.  Tom, now half-standing, half-kneeling in Harry’s chair, moaned something indistinct, and pressed his body against Harry’s so that Harry could feel the insistent push of his erection against his thigh, and the almost unbearable thrill of pleasure when he shifted so that it brushed against his own.

A polite cough from the doorway caused them both to look up, startled.  Lestrange stood clutching a roll of parchment and a quill, his mouth open and his eyes as round as saucers.

“Your – your – stationery, my Lord,” he said in a choked voice.

“Ah – yes,” said Tom, trying valiantly to regain an air of authority but looking adorably flustered with his cheeks pink, and his usually neat hair a dire mess due to Harry’s roaming fingers.  “Just – ah – leave them over there, will you.  And then – go away again, please.  Thank you, Lestrange.”

Lestrange did as he was told, bowed, and then legged it out of the room as fast as he could.  Tom stayed staring at the empty doorway for a while in disbelief, and then looked down at Harry.  Harry held his gaze for a few moments, before they both dissolved into a fit of hopeless giggles.


	17. Back to School

A couple of days later, Harry and Tom found themselves trudging up the sweeping gravel drive towards Hogwarts castle from the Hogsmeade Gate.  They were both wearing borrowed school uniforms, their pointed hats pulled down low over their eyes.  Lestrange was grappling with setting up a portkey on the shores of the Great Lake, while Avery and Rosier had the coveted role of sitting “on standby” with tankards of butterbeer in the _Three Broomsticks_.  Back at Godric’s Hollow, Nott was poring over his dog-eared school copy _of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ in the hope that it might give him a few hints as to how he might prepare a suitable space for Slytherin's monster to pass the next few days undetected.  Excluded from the grander plan, Fleamont was supervising Septimus Weasley as he polished his car collection as "punishment" for his treatment of them in Azkaban, whilst Septimus wondered whether he really hadn’t died and gone to heaven.

As Lestrange had predicted, Slughorn had been delighted to hear from his favourite ex-student.  He had spent many a sleepless night since reading of his arrest in the _Daily Prophet_ , feeling that his free and permissive attitude might have somehow led him into the moral maze that had culminated in him being exploited by the likes of the scheming Scarface Wazlib, and so professed himself eager to help Tom get back onto the straight and narrow in any way he could.

The two fake students paused in front of the entrance to the castle.

“Remind me why I’m doing this again,” said Harry, gazing in slight trepidation at the imposing portcullis.

"You still owe me a favour for saving your skin when you were on the run from the Order, doubly so now since I got you out of Azkaban, and I need someone else who speaks Parseltongue.  Do you remember the plan?"

Harry looked askance, slightly irritated at how Tom had an answer for everything, and nodded.  "We go in via the staff entrance.  Slughorn will be waiting for us.  We exchange a few pleasantries.  Then I excuse myself to the bathroom…"

"Good, good," said Tom, eagerly.  "Then?"

"You keep Slughorn distracted - whilst I open the Chamber and get the Basilisk… I close my eyes - I call her - put the sheet over her head - and lead her out of the sewage duct on the … the…

"Right." 

"Right.  Right, right.  Okay.  Then I call you, with the Dark Mark - you make your excuses - and then we join up with Lestrange at the lake."

"Exactly," said Tom, with a satisfied smile.  “Excellent, Harry.”

Harry smiled nervously.  "I'm still not a hundred per cent about the bit in the middle… Are you sure the Basilisk will listen to me?"

"Of course she will.  She loves anyone who can speak Parseltongue… She gets lonely, the poor thing, up there by herself all the time."

"I don't know, Tom… She didn’t seem so friendly last time…"

"That's odd.  Did you try talking to her?"

Harry raised an eyebrow.  "Nah, I was kind of busy, you know, trying not to get killed or petrified to pause for a chit-chat," he said, sarcastically. 

A mischievous smile tugged at the corner of Tom's mouth at the mental image of a tiny twelve-year-old Harry desperately fleeing the Basilisk's venomous jaws, frantically waving the Sword of Gryffindor about over his head… He sighed, wondering why he found almost everything Harry did so bloody endearing. He envied his horcrux for having had the chance to witness the scene first-hand.  Then he had an idea, and turned to Harry with a cordial expression.

"If you are concerned, you can always use the diary as a guide." 

He slipped the little black book from the inner breast-pocket of his blazer and offered it to Harry, who eyed it dubiously.

"I'm not sure being possessed by the ghost of _Tom Riddle's School Days_ is an any more comforting prospect than facing the Basilisk alone…"

"Harry, you really needn't worry. If anything, I was even more of a sweetheart then than I am now…"

"That isn't saying much."

"True."

Harry sighed.  "I guess it'll help me remember which sewer to use.  Left, wasn’t it?"

Tom hit him over the head with the diary.

***

They climbed a narrow, spiralling staircase behind the astronomy tower, which Tom identified as the staff entrance and knocked on the door.  It was opened almost immediately by a smooth-faced, pink-cheeked, blond Professor Slughorn in a red silk smoking jacket.  He leant against the doorframe seductively, reeking of a strong, musky cologne; but his smile faded slightly when his blue eyes alighted on not one, but two schoolboy figures.

"Tom, my dear," he said, looking from one to the other.  "How simply delightful to see you… but I must say, I had no idea you were bringing a friend…"

"Hello, Professor.  Yes - this is…" Tom hesitated a moment.  "Harry Potter."

Slughorn peered at Harry.  "Potter, eh?  Ah yes, I thought you looked familiar!  For a moment, I thought you looked rather like that Roo– but no matter, no matter…  I taught Fleamont, you know, although I must say I underestimated him a little… I hear he’s doing very well now…  Well come in, come in, don't linger on the doorstep, you never know who might be watching, these days…"

They took tea in Slughorn's fussily-decorated study, having declined his offer of something a little stronger.  Harry perched uncomfortably on the edge of one of the overstuffed armchairs, feeling very much like a student again; he was amazed how very little Slughorn's tastes seemed to have changed over 50 years and another dimension.  Slughorn devoured the box of crystallised pineapple Tom had proffered, licking the sugar off his fat fingers hungrily.

“I don’t know why, Tom, but they always seem to taste even better when you bring them… I sometimes wonder whether you don’t spike them with something extra-special...  You always were excellent at potions…”

Tom raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

“Why, Professor, whatever _do_ you mean?” he said, coyly, crossing his legs primly while he sipped his tea from the elegant bone-china cup.

Slughorn chuckled throatily and leaned forward in his chair.  Harry did not like the way he looked at Tom – almost slavering over him, like a piece of meat. He glanced back and forth between the florid, lecherous professor and the simpering student with an expression of disgust.

“You’re right, of course,” chortled Slughorn, darkly. “I doubt there is any concoction in existence that could make you more irresistible than you already are…”

“What do you think of the current political situation, Professor?” said Harry, suddenly, in an attempt to change the subject.  Slughorn glanced at him, startled, as though he had forgotten Harry was in the room.

“Er…” he blinked and drew out his silk pocket handkerchief to daub at the remnants of sugar on his lips. “Well, Mr Potter, between you and me, I find it worrying – very worrying indeed.  I am not sure of what benefit can be gained from any _rapprochement_ with Grindelwald’s regime.  We tried appeasement before and it didn’t work. The _Hexenkanzler_ is an extremist, and extremists like that simply can’t be reasoned with.”

“But Dumbledore is clever – you must have known him quite well, when he taught here at Hogwarts.  Maybe he has a plan to neutralize him somehow.”

Slughorn looked pensive.  “Maybe… Albus Dumbledore is certainly the most intelligent, incisive wizard I have ever met… yet… even he is prone to errors of judgment.  I do believe he holds a certain sympathy for Grindelwald, and that while I am sure he finds his _means_ abhorrent, he has no great quarrel with his _ends_ … That’s why I, for one, was rather uneasy with Albus’s appointment…”

“If you felt uneasy, why didn’t you say anything?” said Tom, frowning. “I’m not so sure even Grindelwald’s means worry him so much now.  Look what happened to me, and to the others… Lestrange, Avery, Rosier… I hear even the Malfoys and the Blacks are being pulled in for questioning now.”

“Indeed,” said Slughorn, blinking rapidly and beginning to sweat slightly.  “But you know how these things are, Tom… and after all, Albus was democratically elected… who was I to be contrarian?”

Tom sighed angrily, and looked out of the window, tapping his foot impatiently against the leg of the chair.  Slughorn’s usually smooth, dome-like brow creased with worry beneath the thick slab of his straw-coloured hair.

“Don’t be like that, Tom… I can’t bear to see you upset…  Things will turn out all right in the end, I’m sure.  I am sorry about what happened to you… if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you…”

Tom’s eyes slowly travelled back to meet Slughorn’s gaze.

“Well… perhaps there is something…”

_It’s time to leave, Harry._

Harry started to hear Tom’s voice resounding in his head once again.  He looked at Tom, whose eyes were still fixed on Slughorn, their expression suddenly mysterious and darkly inviting.  Slughorn stared back, almost drooling, captivated.  Harry felt as though a lead weight was forming in the pit of his stomach.

_No._

Tom glanced at him with irritation.  _What?_

 _I’m not leaving_ , Harry thought.  _He looks as though he’s going to pounce on you the moment I leave the room._

Harry felt Tom sigh inwardly.  _That_ is _the idea, Harry.  How else did you think I was going to distract him?  That’s why I needed you, otherwise I would have sent someone else and gone to get the Basilisk myself…_

Harry felt cold betrayal pierce his heart.  _Can’t you have done it some other way?_ he thought, miserably.

 _Don’t be such a baby_ , came the cold reply.  _We have a job to do.  Now, GET UP!_

At these last words, Harry felt himself propelled to his feet against his will.  Slughorn looked up, startled, as Harry practically leapt out of his chair.

“Is something wrong, m’ boy?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Harry said, mechanically.

Slughorn hesitated. “Um – I’m not sure that you ought to go wandering around by yourself… given the circumstances… if someone sees you, questions might be asked…”

While he was saying this, Tom stretched his legs slightly, ‘accidentally’ brushing the older man’s exposed ankle with the tip of his shiny school shoe, and causing him to break off mid-sentence.  Slughorn looked back at Tom, who met his eye with a languid smile.  A large bead of sweat appeared on the smooth forehead.

“Uh… It’s just down the hallway, m’ boy,” he said, distractedly, without so much as a second glance in Harry’s direction.

Harry stomped out of the room, shooting Tom a withering glare as he did so.  Tom did not look up.

Harry’s blood boiled with jealousy as he trudged down the empty school corridor.  It was a Hogsmeade weekend, and most of the students would have been away stuffing their faces with sweets from Honeydukes and trying to look old enough to purchase something stronger than Butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks.  Harry’s stomach twisted and turned at the thought of Tom alone with Slughorn in the privacy of the professor’s study, balking at the thought of the greedy fat fingers grasping at Tom’s lovely pale skin, his mouth slobbering all over that beautiful body that Harry already somehow thought of as his…

As he walked along, seething, he became dimly aware of the diary in the pocket of his robes, slapping against his leg with each angry movement.  He paused for a moment and took it out.  It looked much newer than when Harry had first encountered it, and the inscription on the front page was bolder, the ink more fresh.

_This diary is the property of T. M. Riddle._

Harry was seized with a sudden desire to know more.  Possessed with envy, he shouldered the door into one of the empty classrooms and pulled out a quill.

 _Did you ever sleep with Horace Slughorn?_ he wrote in an angry scrawl.


	18. The Chamber of Secrets

Harry watched as the ink sank into the page, his words disappearing entirely.  There was a pause as he waited for the Diary’s response; he could hear his own breathing, ragged and uneven.  Eventually, new letters started to appear in a neater, more precise hand than his own.

_Who’s asking?_

_Harry Potter,_ Harry wrote back.  _Your boyfriend from the future._

Harry’s words were absorbed again, and were replaced by an odd splattering of ink, as though somebody had just upturned an inkwell over the page in surprise.  This disappeared fairly quickly, to be replaced with the neat handwriting again.

_My… boyfriend?_

_Yes,_ wrote Harry.  He was seized with a sudden sense of mischief, given that the Diary was pretty much at his mercy for information about the outside world.  _I mean, I wasn’t looking for anything serious at first, but then you were all, ‘Oh, Harry, you’re so gorgeous, let me give up being a dark wizard and spend the rest of my life with you’ and I was like ‘Jeez, OK, but only for the good of the wizarding world,’ because that’s the type of hero I am._

There was a long pause.

_Lies._

Harry smiled to himself.  _OK, OK.  Maybe the feelings are mutual.  You’re pretty easy on the eye after all._

_I still don’t believe you._

_Fine,_ wrote Harry.  _Believe what you want.  But then, if it weren’t true, how would I know…_

He proceeded to describe in graphic detail exactly where and how Tom like to be touched, the things that made his cheeks flushed and his eyes clouded with desire, the spots that elicited the most exquisite moans, the most intense orgasms… Harry could feel his own arousal building as he relived the heady moments in the attic room at Borgin and Burke’s, the desperate fumbling in the jail cell, and most recently the long, languid nights at Godric’s Hollow… He drew his left hand slowly across the stiffening member in his trousers, aching for release…

Suddenly, he remembered he had a job to do, and just how furious Tom would be if he actually failed to get to the Basilisk on time because he had been too busy distracting himself with Tom’s teenage horcrux.  It really didn’t bear thinking about. He snapped the diary shut, jammed the quill and ink into his back pocket, and filled his head with thoughts of Dolores Umbridge as he made his way down to the first floor girls’ lavatory.  On reaching the familiar corridor, he looked over both his shoulders to check nobody was coming before creaking the door open and slipping inside.

The white, marble bathroom with its high mirrors and gothic sinks was just as he remembered it.  Here was the place on the floor where he had sat with Hermione and Ron, brewing the polyjuice potion.  And here was the stall which everyone avoided, because…

“Tom… is that you?!  You came back!”

A familiar, whining voice filled Harry’s ears in the echoing bathroom, and Harry looked up to see the lank-haired, bespectacled ghoul of the girl’s lavatory whizzing towards him with an unusually excited smile on her pale moon face.  She stopped short in front of Harry, squinting at him.

“Oh… you’re not Tom,” she said, disappointed. “What are you doing in the girls’ bathroom, strange boy?  Do you even _go_ here?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Harry.  “Sort of.  I mean, I used to… I just came back - to – to get something.  You know Tom… Riddle?” 

He wasn’t sure why he was so surprised.  Clearly Tom and Myrtle had attended Hogwarts at the same time, and being a prefect Tom must have had a relatively high profile in the school.

“Oh yes,” said Myrtle, giggling.  “I know him _very_ well.  We used to have a _lot_ of fun down here, just him and me...”

“Doing what?” said Harry, annoyed, jealousy rearing up in his stomach again.

Myrtle grasped at both her pigtails and made a long face.  “Talking about _death_ …”

“Oh,” said Harry.  “Okay.”

“You sort of reminded me of him, just now, when you came in… And that book, he had one just like it.” She pointed at the diary.

Harry looked at the diary again, turning it over in his hands.

“Yes, it’s his, actually –“ he began, but stopped short, seeing frantic scribble had appeared on a couple of the pages.

_Harry?_

_Are you still there, Harry?_

_Please tell me more about yourself._

_How did we meet?_

_…Harry?_

Harry snorted.  Clearly, the Diary had been somewhat positively affected by his foray into erotic prose.

 _Yes, I’m still here,_ Harry wrote.  _Sorry, I’m kind of busy at the moment._

 _Doing what?_  The Diary responded quickly.  Harry smiled at the eager flicks of ink on the usually neat handwriting.

 _I'm on my way to the Chamber of Secrets to fetch the Basilisk, so we can defeat Grindelwald. That's why Tom gave me this diary, so you could help me out. But right now, I’m talking to Moaning Myrtle._ He looked up at the ghost, who was studying him curiously, head cocked to one side.

_I see... Moaning Myrtle... You mean Myrtle Warren?_

_Yes, you know,_ wrote Harry sarcastically.  _The one you killed.  She’s a ghost now, by the way._

_Oh… Tell her I said “Hi.” How is death treating her?_

Harry frowned, disgusted at the glib way the Diary referred to the person it had murdered.  Suddenly, however, he sensed a cold presence behind him, and realised Myrtle had crept closer and was now reading over his shoulder.

“Oooh!” she squealed excitedly, draping herself around Harry’s neck.  “You’re talking to him through the diary!  Tell him I said “Hi,” back, and being dead is absolutely hooooorrible…You have no idea… I mean, it wasn’t all bad at first, with all the drama, and the attention, and getting my own back on everybody who’d ever mistreated me… Ooh… You should have seen Olive Hornby’s face… But then, I showed up at her wedding… Apparently that’s not allowed, or something… So now I have to stay here in the toilet…” She sighed sadly.  “It’s awfully boring… Sometimes I sneak into the boys’ for a little bit of entertainment, but there’s never very much to see…And it turns out, nobody much cares if you are suicidal when you’re already dead… I’m not sure why I wanted it so badly in the first place.”

Harry stared at her, open mouthed. “Wait, what?  You actually wanted to die?”

Myrtle nodded mournfully.  “It seemed glamorous at the time… And Tom said – ooh!”  She clamped her hands over her mouth.  “I’m not allowed to talk about that – am I?”

“You can tell me,” said Harry, firmly.  “Tom said it was OK.” That was a lie, of course, but Harry told himself it was for a good cause.

“All right,” Myrtle said, quickly, and Harry had the impression she had been bursting to tell this story for rather a long time and needed very little encouragement.  “Well, Tom said if I did want to die, I might as well make myself useful… And no boy has ever looked at me in that way… Oh, he was just dreamy, even more handsome than you, and so sensitive, and so understanding, and what’s more, he said he _needed my body_ … I’m not exactly sure for, some sort of experiment, I think, it sounded very complicated… but ugh, I was soooo ready… And it was beautiful… That great big monster, and I was its very first victim in a thousand years!  Me!  Unimportant, ugly, moaning little Myrtle, whom nobody ever paid any attention to… Well, everyone was crying, and they almost shut down the school.  I felt ever so important!”  Myrtle spread her arms out dramatically.  “But I didn’t say a word, it was a secret, you see…”

Harry shook his head in disbelief.  What a mess.  He’d never in a million years have imagined that Myrtle was actually a willing component in the construction of Tom’s first horcrux.  But now that he thought about it, it made a lot of sense.  He’d sometimes wondered why Myrtle, who had been the first person on the scene of her own murder, and who seemed to spend a lot of time in the Hogwarts plumbing apparatus, seemed completely ignorant of the Basilisk who killed her. 

Not that it made the situation any better.  Tom had clearly exploited the loneliness of a sad teenage girl for his own nefarious ends.  He really was an awful person, and Harry was annoyed with himself that he kept forgetting it. Still, his plot to bring down Grindelwald seemed like it just might work, and Harry was still glad to help if it meant a better life for Fleamont, Septimus and the others and the way towards the path home for himself.

He bid Myrtle goodbye, professing he had a job to take care of, and turned towards the sinks.  He located the tap with the tiny serpent engraved on it which signalled the entrance to the Chamber.  He put his lips close to the metal and whispered.

_“Open.”_

There was a creaking, mechanical sound as the door to the Chamber was revealed; Harry leapt feet first into the damp, dark crevice.  He opened the diary again as he descended, his writing becoming erratic and nigh on illegible as he clambered over the various obstacles on the way down into the dank recess below the school.

 _I can't believe you would manipulate a teenage girl into some kind of one-sided suicide pact just as an experiment…_ he wrote angrily.

He slid down the damp, porous rock and glanced at the diary again to read its reply.

_Ah… I see Myrtle has been blabbing.  Well, for your information, she wanted to do it.  She kept saying she wanted to die… And I wanted to test out making a horcrux.  It made a lot of sense._

_She was fourteen, Tom.  We say and do a lot of things when we're fourteen that we later regret._

_She doesn't regret it.  You've seen her - she was happy as a pig in muck, haunting Olive Hornby.  And now she can't do that anymore, she can complain about it to her heart's content.  She got exactly what she hoped for…_

 Harry made his way past the ancient serpentine carvings, hardly looking where he was going as he scribbled away in the little black book.

_You never gave her a chance to mature, to think differently… She's permanently stuck in depressed teenager mode, forever.  Can you imagine what that's like?_

_Yes, actually…_ said the Diary.

Harry snorted, frowning.  He supposed the diary was right, in a way.  The splinter of Voldemort’s soul encased in the diary wasn't in so much of a different position from Myrtle's, after all.  Still, before he could begin to feel the tiniest twinge of pity for the Diary, fresh words appeared on the page in front of him.

_It wasn’t just about the horcrux, you know.  There was the added advantage of her being a mudblood…  It would have been stupid to pass up such an opportunity… They all knew I was serious about being Slytherin’s Heir after that!  Yes, Myrtle was much more useful dead than she ever was alive.  I was practically doing the girl a favour…_

_You’re vile_.  _Everyone deserves a chance at life_ , wrote Harry, shutting the book.  He had arrived into the atrium of the Chamber, and the huge, bearded statue of Salazar Slytherin loomed imposingly before him.  The entire chamber was filled with an ethereal green light, the rippling reflections of the water playing off the rock, throwing strange shadows and creating the illusion of sentience in the great stone eyes that gazed down at him from above.  Harry tried to swallow down the fear that was now mounting in his chest.  He readied the sheet he had been keeping in his satchel, cleared his throat and spoke in Parseltongue.

" _Um… hello?  Is anyone there_?"

He waited a few moments.  Silence.

" _Uh… Basilisk?  Miss… Basilisk_?"

Nothing. 

He pulled the diary out again with an irritated sigh, annoyed that he still needed its help.

 _How do you call the Basilisk?  Does it have a name?_ he wrote.

There was an unnecessarily long pause before the Diary decided to reply.

 _No_ , it said, simply.  Harry thought he could detect a rather sulky tone, although it was impossible to say for certain, only having the ink on the page to go on.

_What do I say, then?  It's not coming out._

Another long pause.  Then:

_She's sleeping.  You have to address Slytherin directly._

Harry frowned.  He guessed it made sense that there was some sort of wizardry involved; that the basilisk didn't just hang around hoping someone might show up once every couple of centuries.

He looked up at the ancient, monkey-like face and sighed, saying a little prayer to Godric Gryffindor to forgive him for what he was about to do.

" _Speak to me, Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four_ ," he intoned, crossing his fingers behind his back for the last part.  Then he shut his eyes tight.  He felt the Chamber begin to shake and vibrate with some profound magical force, and heard the massive stone mouth above him slowly begin to unhinge.  He waited, his heart pounding in his chest, his throat dry.  There was a slow scraping, slithering sound of scales on stone, and a dry hiss filled his ears.

" _Masssssster…_?"

Harry swallowed.  He could feel the massive, cold presence edging closer, its shadow falling over his face, and imagined the huge venomous fangs suspended above his head.

"Um," said Harry.  "Not quite.  I have been sent by your master.  He has an important mission for you."

" _Missssssion…_." repeated the Basilisk.  Harry could feel its putrid breath on his face.  " _Rip….?  Tear….?  Kill….?_ "

"Um," said Harry, again.  "I'm not sure.  Probably not.  It might be just a petrifying job, you know."

" _Ahhhhh_ …." Said the Basilisk.  It sounded disappointed.  " _Ssssure thing_ …"

"Great," said Harry.  "We can get going then.  Only - um - if you would kindly - your Master said I should put this sheet over your head… you know… as a precaution…"

" _Ahhhhh_ …" said the Basilisk again.  " _Underssssstandable_ …."  He felt the Basilisk lower her great, crowned head at his feet with a soft thud.

"Thanks," said Harry, throwing the sheet over her head.  He opened one eye gingerly.  All good. 

He chuckled to himself, at the thought of the Basilisk being the easiest thing about the whole mission.  She was so polite and compliant when she wasn’t being ordered to kill schoolchildren. 

The Diary, however, was another question entirely.  Harry opened both eyes and picked up the little black book once more.

_Remind me which sewer I need to use to get to the Great Lake?_

There was another long pause before the Diary formulated its response.  Harry tapped his foot impatiently.  Why were sixteen-year-olds so bloody difficult?  At last, words began to appear on the open page in front of him.

 _I never slept with Professor Slughorn_ , said the Diary.  Harry raised his eyebrows, baffled. 

 _Great_ , he wrote.  _Glad to hear it.  But can you just_ -

Before he could even finish, more of Tom's handwriting, only hurried and unusually untidy, was already appearing on the page.

_I wish I had.  I've never slept with anyone.  I never will.  I'm all alone._

Harry sighed, feeling the gnawing twinge of pity again.  Tom was a complete bastard; but, for reasons somewhat beyond their control, he was Harry’s bastard, and that was O.K.

 _You're not alone_ , wrote Harry.  _You have me._

_No I don’t… You belong to him - the other me…_

Harry looked down at the page, and chewed his lip worriedly.  He supposed it was right, in a way. But Tom and the Diary were one and the same – weren’t they?  Writing continued to cover the page in front of him, getting more and more frantic as it went along.

_He gets to have everything…   Whilst I'm stuck here, an eternal teenager, like Myrtle.  I'm worse than a ghost.  Just a memory.  A fragment.  I just want to be whole again, and  have a life, and a body, and a boyfriend, instead of being stuck in a diary….I want SEX, God damn it.  Or at least a penis.  Do you have any idea how hard it is having the mind of a sixteen year old boy with no OUTLET?  It's enough to drive one to kill a whole schoolfull of mudbloods…_

"Er…" said Harry. 

The Diary carried on spewing words, the handwriting becoming messy and uneven, sending blots of ink flying into Harry's face.

 _What's the point of having a huge basilisk if you can't even FUCK anyone ?! O, irony of ironies!  Cruellest destiny… You were right, Harry.  Everyone deserves a chance at life.  Nobody deserves to be a virgin forever…  Not Myrtle… and especially not me… Why did I ever think making a horcrux was a good idea?  I had no idea what I was_ really _severing back there...  I wish I'd never done it.  I'm sorry I ever killed Myrtle…  I wish I had my body back again… I wish… I wish… I…_

The writing in the diary had become worse and worse throughout this tirade, until it finally became an illegible scrawl.  The ink dripped and ran down the page like tears.

"Uh," Harry said aloud, holding the diary at arms' length in an attempt to stop the ink dripping all over his shirt. "Stop that - stop that, d'you hear?"

But the diary didn't stop.  It trembled in his hand, the pages flapping wildly, ink seeping from every crease and fold.

" _What'sssssss up_?" asked the Basilisk, from under the sheet.

"It's the diary, it's - it's - exploding -" spluttered Harry, narrowly avoiding swallowing a mouthful of ink.

The trembling was becoming more violent - a vibration, almost - until it finally flew from Harry's hands, hit the wall of the Chamber with a wet thump, and fell onto the floor, where it lay silent and oozing, in a pool of its own ink.

" _Ahhhhhh…."_ said the Basilisk. " _You're in biiiiiig trouble_."


	19. All That Glisters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kind comments! They really made my whole day! Seriously! Squee~ 
> 
> I am trying to write as much as I can at the moment as I am going on holiday on Friday and then will have the dreaded return to college in September... when updates might become slightly less frequent (although I will try to keep them fairly regular). But for now, here, have another chapter!

“What do you mean, you _broke_ it?!”

Tom was incensed; suddenly he seemed about two feet taller, looming over Harry with a murderous red gleam in his eyes.  It was terrible.  Harry had not seen him looking this close to the mature Lord Voldemort since he had fallen into the pensieve.  His scar throbbed painfully.

“I don’t – I don’t know – one minute it was – and then it just –“ 

He made a hopeless gesture with his arms.  The ink-sodden diary lay on the table between them, forlorn and lifeless.  They were back at Godric’s Hollow now; the Basilisk was curled up comfortably alongside the classic cars in Fleamont’s garage; everything had gone according to plan – apart from this one minor hitch.

“Do you have any idea what I went through to make that?  What I _sacrificed_?  The _pain_?  The _suffering_?  Just to have you _break_ it?”

“I’m sorry – I’m really sorry -!”  Harry stammered.  “I really didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear…”  He didn’t know what to say.  The horcrux had just self-destructed in his hands, and he had been powerless to stop it.

Tom stared at him, speechless with rage, his face pale, his lips trembling slightly.  The white fingers wrapped around his wand, and for an awful moment Harry really thought he was about to hear that awful curse, and see the flash of green light which would end everything forever.  He flinched; but the curse never came. Tom hesitated, and all of a sudden, he seemed to deflate, like a sad, dark balloon, looking small in his oversized black cloak.

“Just go away,” he said, quietly, rubbing his temples.  “Get out of my sight, before I – do something I regret -”

Harry nodded, relieved, and turned to go, but something made him hesitate.

“The thing is – I think it’s the regretting that might be the problem –“

Tom gave Harry such a terrible look that he didn’t dare to say anything more; he scarpered, barging through the oak doors of the study into the hallway, and colliding with the rest of the Death Eaters, who had been listening in, their ears pressed against the door.

“Harry – you’re alive!” cried Avery, happily.  Then he turned to Rosier with a self-satisfied smirk.  “Come on then, cough up.”

“Damn it,” said Rosier, handing him a fistful of galleons.  “My money was on you getting fed to the snake,” he explained, without embarrassment.

“I can’t believe you totalled the diary,” said Lestrange, with a sense of awe.  “That was one of his most prized possessions –“

“He took it with him everywhere –“

“Slept with it under his pillow –“

“All right, all right!” said Harry, angrily.  “Like I said, and you evidently heard, as none of you have any shame at listening in – it wasn’t my fault, it just sort of blew up – of its own accord.  I don’t see why that’s so unbelievable.  It was possessed with the spirit of a sixteen-year-old, for Merlin’s sake… you should have seen how volatile I was at that age…”

The Death Eaters exchanged unconvinced glances. 

Harry sighed, miserably.  The trouble was, deep down, he knew it was somehow his fault.  He’d wanted to persuade the diary of the error of Tom’s ways… he’d wanted it to feel remorse… A funny kind of remorse it had ended up feeling, as it turns out, but clearly that was enough.  Now he was definitely for it.

Tom was unspeakably angry with him, just when it seemed like he had been starting to get over the mistrust he had felt for him at the beginning… now he probably wouldn’t trust him with anything anymore.  Maybe he’d never even speak to him again. 

Harry felt his nose began to itch, and he bit down hard on his bottom lip to prevent it from wobbling.

“Hey,” said Nott, kindly, laying a hand on his arm.  “Don’t worry. He’ll come round eventually.  The thing you have to know about Voldemort is – it’s awful when he’s angry, but it never lasts very long.  He’s not really the type to hold a grudge.”

“Especially not since he’s so smitten with you,” added Lestrange, rather huffily.

Harry looked up at him curiously, sniffing slightly.  “Is he?” he said, uncertainly.  “I’m never really sure what he thinks about me…” 

Sometimes it seemed as though Tom felt genuine affection for Harry, but he had also used Harry’s own feelings to manipulate him.  Especially after seeing how Tom had behaved with Slughorn and Myrtle, Harry could never be quite sure that it wasn’t all a dastardly ruse to get what he wanted.  

However, Rosier’s eyebrows disappeared into his sandy hairline with incredulity.  “Are you serious?  I thought you’d doped him with _amortentia_ , he practically has hearts in his eyes every time he talks to you – or about you –“

“He talks about me?”

“Only pretty much all the time,” said Avery.  “It gets very boring.  Harry says this.  Harry thinks that.  Harry prefers X.  Harry doesn’t like Y.  Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry…”

“We’re officially experts on you, now,” added Lestrange.

“Ask me any question about Harry Potter,” said Nott.  “I guarantee you I can answer.”

 “Favourite food?”

 “That’s easy – treacle tart, of course.”

“Birthday?”

“31 July.  Do you know that is exactly _seven_ months after the Dark Lord’s own birthday?  Do you think that means something or – is it just a coincidence?” said Nott, imitating Tom’s rather nasal voice.

“Hobbies?”

“Quidditch – and fighting evil – obviously –“

“Say, my Lord, why is his nickname Roonil Wazlib?”

“Well, Avery,” Nott said, in the nasal voice again. “I am glad you asked - it’s a very amusing story, actually, you _will_ laugh… that is an order, by the way… his friend had a spell checking quill and –“

“OK!  OK, I get the picture!” said Harry, blushing furiously.  It was a nice feeling to know that Tom was actually fond of him; still, it made the gnawing sense of guilt in his stomach even worse.   He left the Death Eaters giggling to themselves, and went into the pink Drawing Room, where the two Gryffindors were playing chess. 

Fleamont seemed to be getting more and more frustrated at the game, which he was clearly losing badly.

"How do you even - I don't - _what_? - you're cheating!"

Septimus smirked smugly and leaned back in his chair as his rook mercilessly bashed Fleamont's bishop to bits.

"I most certainly am not.  You must need new glasses, Fleabs, because that move was obvious…"

"Ugh.  This game sucks bludgers…" Fleamont said, standing up angrily.  His expression changed rapidly, however, when he caught sight of Harry.

“Hullo Harry!” he said, with a cordial grin. “You're back!  Speaking of bludgers, want to go and play a bit of the old dodge 'n' seek?  I've got a set of new Nimbus 500's…"

Harry shook his head glumly and plopped into an armchair, his feet extended far out in front of him and his arms draped over the sides pitifully.

"I say," said Fleamont, pushing his glasses up his nose with an expression of concern.  "Are you quite all right?"

Harry shook his head again.  Fleamont looked helplessly at Septimus; he was barely mature enough to be a father, never mind a grandfather.  The young Weasley sighed and got up from the chess table, fixing Harry with a knowing look. 

"Can't you see?  It's clearly an _affair de coeur_.  I believe Potter minor here has fallen out with his sweetheart."

Fleamont rolled his eyes impatiently.  "They're always falling out.  In fact, I'm not sure if they've ever been _in_ in the first place…"

"It's bad this time," said Harry, miserably.  "I did something pretty… terrible."

"Is there no way you could make it up to him?" suggested Septimus.  "Flowers… chocolates… ?"

"I just destroyed a piece of his soul," Harry said, glumly.  "I don't think a box of _Quality Street_ are quite going to cut it, somehow."

"What about really _expensive_ chocolate?  Or jewellery?" said Fleamont.  "That always worked for me… I know they say there are things money can't buy but they're few and far between, trust me…"

"Capitalist scum," said Septimus, affectionately.

"You love it, really, Weasley," said Fleamont.

The redhead smiled.  "As much as it pains me to admit it, you might actually be right for once.  Riddle does like jewellery...  He used to wear this awfully ostentatious ring to school, and I'm sure he won a prize once for an essay on Ravenclaw's lost diadem…"

“I was thinking of paying a visit to the Goblin Goldsmith’s in the village, anyway,” said Fleamont.  “Dumbledore’s just sent through the seating plan for the gala dinner and he’s put me next to Euphemia Shacklebolt, of all people… Harry’s not the only one with grovelling to do…”

Harry chewed his lip, thoughtfully.  "Goblin gold… I guess maybe… maybe Tom would appreciate something like that..." he said, slowly.

"Rightio, then," said Fleamont, cheerfully.  "I'll come with you and help you choose something nice for Little Lord Darkness in there, and you can help me get something for ‘Feemie.  Let's not bring Weasley; I imagine all the concentrated wealth would disturb him."

***

The goldsmith's in Godric's hollow was a tiny, whimsical looking building, like something plucked  out of a German fairytale book.  The wooden beams that supported the ancient structure curved and careened in impossible directions, giving the impression that it simply could not have supported itself without magic.  The muggles who were also shopping on the quiet village high street passed it by without so much as a second glance.

If Harry had been struck by the ricketiness of the building's outer appearance, the gleam of the gold inside was far more dazzling.  The shelves and counters glittered with jewels and the purest yellow metal, whilst the wizened goblin shop assistants stood on stools, serving a tiny handful of customers.  They looked much kinder and more approachable than the ones in Gringott's, Harry thought.

"Can I help you, hmm, gentlemen?" asked a goblin with oversized glasses balanced precariously on his pointy ears.  He smiled at them through yellowed teeth.

"Yes, thanks," Fleamont said brightly.  "We're looking for a gift for… someone special."  He glanced at Harry, who nodded.  The goblin gave them a knowing look.

"Well, we have just had a particularly impressive shipment of diamond earrings, straight from the mines…"

Fleamont appeared to consider this, but Harry shook his head quickly, wrinkling his nose.

"No - no earrings," he said, firmly.  "I mean, maybe for Euphemia, but for Tom… I was thinking more of something like that…" He pointed to a silver tie pin, wrought at the end into the shape of a miniature snake, its tiny emerald eyes twinkling in the soft light of the shop.

"Ah," said the goblin, with another knowing look.  "Would I be right in saying that your someone special is a Slytherin?"

" _The_ Slytherin," Harry sighed, clearly lovestruck. The goblin smiled wider, the sharp yellow teeth like little points of gold in his ugly head.

"In that case, and given you're with Mr Potter here - a most favoured customer -" he bowed obsequiously, "- why not choose something equally unique?"  He pointed with a claw-like finger to an impressive bejewelled circlet, fashioned out of a golden serpent biting its own tail.

"The _ouroboros_ ," whispered the Goblin with a hushed sense of awe.  "A symbol of eternity…"

"Uh…" Harry hesitated.  Not only did it look awfully expensive, he balked at the idea of furnishing Tom's already inflated ego with some sort of immortality crown.  He'd probably never take it off... but on the other hand, it was just the sort of thing he'd appreciate...   He was suddenly interrupted in his indecision, however, by a deep female voice bellowing from another side of the shop.

"Fleamont, _darling_ , is that you?" 

An extremely fat, squat woman, barely taller than the goblins bowing and scraping in her wake, was making her way over to them, peering through a pair of ivory opera glasses which obscured her face.  Even so, Harry thought he recognised the impossibly tall ginger hairdo, and the frou-frou dress with its plunging neckline…

"Ah, Hepzibah," Fleamont said, smiling weakly.  "How are you?"

"Fabulous, darling," she said.  Harry got a whiff of her sickening sweet perfume as she came closer.  She jabbed Fleamont in the stomach area with the stem of her opera glasses.  "Although I do have a bone to pick with you.  My last shipment of _Sleekeazy_ hasn’t come through… I'm _in extremis_ , my dear.  It takes a lot to keep me looking this gorgeous, at my age, I can tell you…" she winked grotesquely, patting the construction balanced precariously on her tiny, fat head. 

Fleamont and Harry exchanged quizzical glances. 

"I didn't realise it worked on wi-" Fleamont began, but Harry elbowed him hard in the stomach before he could mention _wigs_.  A plan was beginning to formulate in his mind.

"-witches who have such stunning natural locks already," he said, doing his best to imitate Tom's flattering smile.  "Madam, you don't look a day over eighteen… how did you do in your NEWTs?"

"Oh, stop, stop!" shrieked Hepzibah, clobbering him with her opera glasses violently.  Harry smiled through the pain, his eyes watering.  "Fleamont, who is this charming young man?"

"He's my - uh - cousin, Harry…"

Hepzibah leered at him through the opera glasses.  "Harry, eh?" she said, licking her lips in a grotesque manner.  "What exquisite eyes, you have… _Enchantée_ , my dear."

"How d'you do," said Harry in a slightly choked voice, trying not to balk at the overpowering stench of perfume that engulfed him as Hepzibah leaned closer.

"Well, I am glad I ran into you two… It seems like the real gems are to be found outside of Diagon Alley after all… So what about my potion, eh, Fleamont darling?"

"I am sorry about that, Hepzibah," said Fleamont.  "Only it's been quite difficult getting to work recently.  I've been in prison, you see."

Hepzibah's heavily made-up eyes widened in shock.  "Darling - how awful!"

"It was, quite."

"The news has been terribly frightening recently.  All these arrests and disappearances - so very concerning, and not to mention inconvenient.  Why, that's why I had to _schlep_ all the way up here - do you know they closed down Borgin and Burke's, darling?  What's a girl to do for her jewellery?  And that tasty little shop-assistant as well… such a shame… I was quite fond of him, you know.  He used to bring me all the best things.  Who would have guessed he was a murderer… Not me, certainly…"

"You can't believe everything you read," said Harry, darkly.  "They're locking lots of people up on false pretences.  Just look at Fleamont - arrested on account of a precious family heirloom."

"Oh my," said Hepzibah.  Fleamont nodded.

"In fact," said Harry.  "They say the Minister is particularly hot on… magical antiques."

"My darling -" Hepzibah began to look frightened.  "Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean," said Harry, lowering his voice and looking about him carefully.  "They're questioning anyone caught with the really old stuff - you know, from back when it was okay to curse muggles…  They’ve been through all the P’s… That’s when they got Fleamont… R’s… Tom Riddle… I suppose they’ll be onto the S’s any minute now…"

"Really?" squeaked Hepzibah.

Harry nodded grimly, and nudged Fleamont, who followed his lead, despite looking rather bemused.

"And Merlin help anybody who has anything to do with blood supremacy… anything, like, belonging to Salazar Slytherin, for example… they say the dementors at Azkaban have been replaced with something far worse…"

Hepzibah gulped.

***

A couple of hours later, they emerged onto Hepzibah Smith's doorstep, and Hokey the House Elf closed the front door behind them with a bang, sliding the bolt across heavily.

“Thank you!” Fleamont called through the keyhole.  He was clutching the bejewelled cup said to have belonged to Helga Hufflepuff, whose egalitarian principles Euphemia had always admired.  “I’ll have your lifetime supply of _Sleekeazy_ sent through right away…!”

Harry paused to steal another glimpse at the delicate silver locket with its curling serpentine "S", before carefully snapping the ebony lid shut.  Even with the wooden box closed, Harry could feel the powerful magic radiating outwards from the precious object contained within it.

Fleamont turned away from the door and gave him a funny look.

"What?" said Harry.  "I was a Slytherin hat-stall, you know."


	20. A Power the Dark Lord Knows... Not?

Back at the Potter residence, Harry approached the large, oak doors of the study and knocked nervously.  There was no answer.  He rapped on the door again, slightly louder this time.

 _I'm not here_ , said an angry voice in his head.  _Go away._

Harry smiled inwardly and eased the door open.  Tom was crouched in the leather-backed office chair, poring over a number of moving photographs spread out on the desk in front of him.  There was a look of intense concentration on his face, and the afternoon sun filtered down from the latticed windows onto his shiny dark hair.  The scene reminded Harry somewhat of when he had first come across him reading in the back of Borgin and Burke’s, only this time he was wearing the incredibly poncy black cape which he evidently thought was fitting attire for “Lord Voldemort”.  He did not look up when Harry entered.

"…Tom?"

As ever, Tom's heart constricted painfully when Harry said his name.  It never sounded ordinary when he said it; it was at once beautiful and terrifying and even intimate, given that his friends rarely called him that anymore.  It worried him that, despite the pain, he liked it, and felt he would never get tired of hearing it as long as it came from Harry’s lips.

"Tom," Harry said again, and Tom looked up in spite of himself.

"Oh look," he sneered, reproachfully.  "It's the horcrux destroyer…"

"I did warn you about that," Harry said, approaching the desk cautiously.  "It _was_ kind of my job before…"

"What do you want?"

"To apologise," Harry said, simply.  He looked down at the photographs on the desk.  They were all of the same person - a tall, handsome wizard with blond moustachios and a wild look in his sparkling blue eyes - Gellert Grindelwald, the German _Hexenkanzler_.  Some of them were action shots, showing his prowess as a duellist or holding the rapt attention of crowds of thousands with his impassioned speeches, under the banner of the Deathly Hallows; others seemed to be promotional photographs, of him staring knowingly into the camera, clutching the fabled Elder Wand, or kissing muggle babies.

"What's all this?" Harry asked, intrigued.  "Have you suddenly decided to convert?"

"Yes," said Tom.  He spoke slowly, thoughtfully.  "I've been thinking about everything you've said… perhaps wizards and muggles aren't so different, after all…"

Harry stared at him, open mouthed.  " _What_?"

Tom’s lip twitched, seeing the shock and confusion on Harry's face.  "Maybe if we just reached out to them in friendship, we'd all be able to get along, singing _Kum Bah Yah_ and toasting marshmallows over the fiendfyre…"

" _Oh_ ," said Harry, with dawning realisation.  "You're _joking_ …"

Tom’s shoulders shook with silent laughter at his own attempt at humour.  "You should have seen your face…"

"Whatever," Harry said, more than a little annoyed that Tom had managed to fool him, if only for a few seconds.  "Don't give up the day job, Tom… I don’t see you as a comedian, somehow…"

Tom smiled up at him, wiping his eyes.  "You're so gullible…"

"And you're a git, but I don't hold that against you.  So what are the photos actually for?"

Tom looked mysterious.  "The golden rule of combat, Harry: know your enemy."

 “Uhuh.”  Harry cast his eyes around the room.  There was no sign of the diary; he supposed Tom must have hidden it away somewhere where the sight of it could not cause him further pain.  His heart constricted a little with guilt.  Then his gaze fell on a few odd bottles and boxes that had not been there earlier… There was a bundle knotgrass, a small box labelled _Fluxweed, 23/08/1945_ … And a jar of something that looked suspiciously like pre-stewed lacewing flies.

“You’re brewing polyjuice potion!” Harry exclaimed, suddenly putting two-and-two together.  “You’re going to pretend to be Grindelwald – aren’t you?!”

Tom blinked.  “How did you –“ he followed Harry’s gaze.  “Oh.  Well done, Harry… You must have a sharp head for potions to guess that from just a few ingredients.”

“Well – not really, I’ve just had quite lot of experience with that particular potion,” Harry said, modestly.  Then he remembered what had caused his consternation.  “But Tom!  This is crazy… do you really think you’ll be able to fool people into thinking you’re somebody you’ve never even met?!”

Tom chewed his lip, looking slightly irresolute, but then his face set in determination.  “Well – I have a _lot_ of photographs.  The man clearly loves himself; he’s so vain.  And you – you’ve sort of met him, haven’t you?  Indirectly.  What do he and Dumbledore call each other?  Is it just Albus and Gellert, or do they have any pet names?”

“Just Albus and Gellert, I think,” said Harry.  “But still!  Tom!  Think about this for a second.  If they catch you, you could get hurt – or even killed – especially since… what happened with the diary…”

He knelt down beside Tom’s chair and took one of his hands in his own.  It was so smooth and perfect, and unlike his own, as yet unmarked with any burns or scars.  Despite all of the pain Harry would end up going through because of it, he wanted it to stay that way.

“Well.  I still have the ring, I think…” said Tom, rather doubtfully.

“Are you sure?” said Harry, looking up at him, his green eyes full of concern as he thought back to when he had held Tom as he shook and wept, reliving the memory of his father’s murder, in the Gaunt shack.

“No…”

“So?” said Harry.

“So… how do you expect us to get to Dumbledore otherwise?  The man never lets his guard down for a single second… except, if what you say is true, with Gellert Grindelwald.  If we dispatch him with the Basilisk, we can take the Elder Wand, get some of Grindelwald’s hair, and then…”

“And then what?”

“And then defeat Dumbledore.  And make him tell us about the pensieve, so you can get back,” Tom added, carefully.

Harry exhaled slowly.  “Tom, it’s not that simple, even if you’ve got the Elder Wand.  Dumbledore is an incredibly powerful wizard.  He might actually kill you.  And I don’t think I could stand it if you… if you…”

Tom looked at Harry, and for a moment Harry saw fear in the wide, dark eyes.  Then they narrowed, and Tom smiled, arrogantly. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.  “I won’t _die_.  I’m the Heir of Slytherin - Dumbledore should be afraid of _me_!”

Somehow, he looked so young and so idiotic, sitting in the old, oak study in that silly black cape, almost like he was in fancy dress, but at the same time his face was so serious and determined, and so _brave_ …  Harry felt a strange feeling in his chest, although his heart was swelling to twice, three times its normal size and trying to escape his ribcage.  His scar tingled, burned and throbbed all at once, and he could feel something churning in his stomach, and then bubbling up until it practically spilled out from his lips like vomit, only it wasn’t vomit, it was words, stupid words –

“I love you,” Harry said, with a kind of wild, desperate look. 

The words seemed to crash onto the floor between them, heavy, like they were made of lead.

Tom stared at him.  “ _What_?”

Harry stared back, mortified.  “I mean – uh – that just sort of – came out.”

There was a stunned silence.

“Yes,” said Tom, after a while.  “It did.  But did you mean it?  _Tell the truth_.”

Harry felt a sort of commanding pressure on his mind, wringing his feelings out of him like he was a piece of lemon in a squeezer, and he had no will to resist.

“Of course I mean it,” he said, hardly in control of his own mouth.  “I love you.  I love you so much – and I don’t want you to get hurt by doing something stupid, or arrogant – but then I love you, I guess, because you _are_ stupid and arrogant – so it’s all a mess, really –“

Tom’s lips began to curve upwards into a bemused smile.  “Harry…”

“And I’m not even sure if I even want to go back into the pensieve – I mean, I do, of course, because it hardly makes sense me being here – but then I also really don’t – because you’re here – and not there – and I love _you_ -“

“Harry…” Tom said again, closing his fingers around Harry’s, as Harry still held is hand in his.

“What?”

“Just – stop talking, will you?  Relax.  We’ll figure something out.”

“We will?” said Harry, his heart quivering with a kind of desperate hope.

“Of course.  You see, I’m extraordinarily fond of you too, Harry Potter.  Even if you are a blithering, horcrux-destroying, bleeding-heart _fool_ who is most probably destined to kill me…”

Harry felt his insides dissolving into nothingness. This was, somehow, the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to him.

“Really?”

“Unfortunately,” said Tom, with a sigh.  “I still haven’t fully decided what I’m going to do about that last part, yet.”

“But you forgive me for breaking the diary?”

“Yes.”

Harry exhaled heavily, seized with a sense of giddy high-spirits.  “Well, that’s a relief.  I thought I was going to have to buy you off with this locket, but now I guess I can keep it for myself…”

Tom frowned.  “What locket?”

“Oh, just… Salazar Slytherin’s locket…” Harry took the carved wooden box out from his back pocket and sprung open the ebony lid.  “Pretty cool, eh?”

Tom’s eyes almost bulged out of his head at the sight of the locket, and he made a kind of strangled noise in his throat, covering his mouth with his hand.  Harry grinned and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

For a long while, Tom didn’t move.  Then, after staring silently at the contents of the box for what seemed like an age, he raised his large black eyes to Harry’s face.

“Where did you get this?” he said, his voice a tiny whisper.

“It’s a funny story, actually,” said Harry, brightly.  “I got it off an old customer of yours – Hepzibah Smith?”

“Hepzibah…” Tom repeated, slowly, incredulously, looking back at the locket.  “I had no idea… And to think… She must have wanted quite a lot for it… much more than your six sickles at one knut, at any rate…”

“No, actually,” said Harry.  “I tricked her into giving it to me for free.”

Tom looked up at Harry again, his eyes bright with mischief and the ghost of a smile crossing his lips.  “Really…? That’s not like you, Harry…”

“I know,” said Harry, smiling.  “But I really think it should belong to you.”  He pressed the box into Tom’s quivering hands.

“I… I’ve been searching for this my whole life.”

“I know.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t men-,” Harry began, but thought better of it. “Well, actually, you _can_ mention it.  Mention it as many times as you like.  Write a poem, maybe, or even a song.  Call up the _Daily Prophet_ and get it in print.  Tell our grandchildren about it every Christmas.  I don’t mind.”

Tom laughed, shaking his head.  Then he laid the box carefully on the table, leaned over, and kissed Harry gently on the lips.  There was something different in this kiss than had been in the others.  Where they had been impassioned and desperate, this was purposeful, deliberate, almost chaste.  Harry smiled against Tom’s lips and pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around the narrow shoulders and squeezing him tightly like he never wanted to let go.  Then he felt something warm, and wet on his face.  Tears.  Tom’s tears.

Harry pulled back a little and looked at him.  “Hey…” he said, softly.

“I’m sorry,” said Tom, wiping his eyes. “It’s just – I wanted – I wanted that so much.  I would’ve killed for it, even –“

“I know!” said Harry.  “But aren’t you glad you didn’t?”

Tom nodded.

“Me too,” said Harry.  “And whatever you do, please don’t turn it into another horcrux.  They’re so much more trouble than they’re worth.”

Tom laughed again, despite still being slightly tearful.  “What?  But after the diary, I’m going to need a replacement… What exactly did you do to it, anyway?”

“I swear, I didn’t do anything!” protested Harry, earnestly.  “It destroyed itself… after…”

“After what?” said Tom, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

“After I told it about us…”

“What about us?”

Harry looked sheepish.  “That we … uh… well.  Basically, that we are totally into each other, and have a lot of sex - which I may or may not have described in painstaking detail…”

Tom stared at him blankly, disbelieving.  “You… wrote about our sex life… in my horcrux,” he said, slowly.

“Yeah.   I mean, I might have embellished a bit.  But I guess it was all a bit too much and after that it just exploded with pent-up frustration and remorse over being a virgin forever.”

Tom passed a hand over his eyes, and sat contemplating this fact for a few moments.  Then he started to laugh.  Quietly at first, his shoulders shaking rather violently, but then becoming louder and louder until he threw his head back and positively cackled.  Harry began to laugh, too, and thought that if any of the Death Eaters had walked in at that precise moment, they would have definitely thought both of them had gone insane. 

Perhaps they’d have been right.


	21. Evasion and Avoidance

The next few days were spent in meticulous planning for exactly how they would approach Grindelwald at the gala ball. Henry Potter’s old oak study had transformed into a war room, with piles of papers, diagrams, maps of the Ministry sewers, and the like.

“The first thing is getting in,” Tom said, decisively.  “Fleabag has an invitation – so, Harry, you are to go in his place, and lure Grindelwald into the toilet somehow –“

“Ew,” said Harry.  “How?”

“What do you mean, ‘ew’?” said Tom, with humour in his eyes.  “He’s marginally better than _Slughorn_ at any rate… I’m sure you’ll think of something.  Meanwhile, Rosier, Lestrange and I will guide the Basilisk through the Central line and into the Ministry plumbing system, plotting a course to the lavatories nearest the banqueting hall – which would be these ones, on the second floor.  We will wait for Harry’s signal via the Dark Mark – then we strike.  You two will dispose of the body, I don’t want my Basilisk eating that muggle-loving scum –“

“Do we really have to kill him?” interrupted Harry.  “Surely if we just petrify him… That’s enough?  He won’t be able to do any more harm…”

Tom sighed irritably.  “That makes everything more complicated.  Where would we put him, for a start?”

“We could imprison him in his own prison, Nurmengard,” said Harry.  “That’s what happened – when Dumbledore did it.  It was all very _ironic_.”

“It will be even more _ironic_ if he manages to escape,” said Tom, mimicking Harry's tone.  “Let’s take a vote…” He looked around keenly at the assembled Death Eaters. “Everyone in favour of blipping him off, raise his hand.” 

Lestrange, Avery, Rosier, Nott and Tom himself all raised their hands in the air.  Tom smiled.

“And who thinks we should just petrify him…?” he asked, and watched in satisfaction as Harry raised his hand grumpily. “Unfortunately, Harry, it looks like it’s five against one.”

“Fine,” Harry grumbled.

“All agreed then,” said Tom.  “Next item – Avery –“

 “I have to be at the ball,” Avery said, quickly, looking slightly guilty.

Tom paused, looking genuinely surprised.  “What?  Why?”

Avery shifted in his seat, evidently embarrassed.  “Well… you know how I’m the social correspondent for the _Daily Prophet_ …” 

Harry looked around, baffled, but saw that everyone else seemed to be nodding along.  He must have missed that little detail about Avery.  

“… I’ve got a press invite.  And if I don’t cover this ball, I’m sure they’ll cancel my column. I’ve missed out on a lot of the season recently,” he added, in a small voice.  “I had to make most of it up.”

Tom stared at him, speechless.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?” said Lestrange, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Well, it’s a generic invite… I have to be anonymous, otherwise I wouldn’t get the gossip, would I?  I just sign everything _Daily Prophet Reporter_ …”

A flash of recognition hit Harry like a thunderclap, and he narrowed his eyes. 

“ _Daily Prophet Reporter_?  Was it _you_ , then, making up all that ridiculous stuff about Roonil Wazlib?”

Avery looked rather sheepish.  “Social news was rather hard to come by whilst I was in prison,” he said.  “I didn’t want my readers to be bored, so I thought I would give them something interesting to chew on while I was away.”

“ _Interesting_?  You called me ‘Scarface,’ said I was a spy for Grindelwald, and that I was wanted for theft, arson and public indecency in eleven different countries.”

“I might have got a bit carried away…”

“Avery,” said Tom, slowly and with a great deal of forbearance.  “We are plotting the downfall of the two most powerful wizards in European magical history at this ball.  I doubt people will care to know about the particular shade of pink Cedrella Black was wearing.”

“Oh, but they will!  Especially Cedrella.  She always chooses just the right outfit for every occasion, I’m sure a political assassination will be no exception.”

Tom sighed and put his head in his hands.  “Slytherin, give me strength… Why do I have such insufferable, brainless toffs for friends,” he murmured.

Then he looked up, with tired eyes.  “All right.  You can go to the ball and keep Harry company.  I suppose he will need somebody _social_ to guide him around the great and the good of modern wizarding Britain.  Nott, why don’t you go too?  You practically wrote the pure blood version of _Who’s Who_ \- you can trade places with that Weasley boy.  Say you were under the imperius curse if anyone asks about the Azkaban incident.”

Nott nodded in acquiescence. 

“Right then,” said Tom, looking slightly defeated.  “I think that’s all for now.  You may depart.” He waved his hand lazily.

The Death Eaters all pushed back their chairs and started to file out of the study.  Harry was last in the line to leave, but Tom caught hold of his wrist.

“Harry… Don’t go yet.  I need your help with something else.”

Harry eyed him suspiciously.  The last time he had been called to stay behind, Tom had practically hypnotised him into getting the Dark Mark branded on his left forearm.

“You’re an auror, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Harry, slowly.  “But only a junior…”

“That doesn’t really matter, does it?  Especially when you count all the _extra-curricular_ training you had…”  He gave Harry a wry smile.

“Well, I suppose not…”

“Good.  I want you to be my duelling partner - I’ll need to practice a lot over the coming week, if I’m ever going to win against Dumbledore.  You said you saw me fighting him, once, didn’t you?  I want you to tell me – show me, how I did it.  What he did.  What I should expect.  That sort of thing.”

Harry blinked, his eyes wide.  “Er… I don’t think…”

“I’ve borrowed a couple of wands from Avery and Lestrange - unicorn hair, and dragon heartstring, not a phoenix feather in sight – so you don’t need to worry about that – that connection thingamajig. It’s just you and me now, Harry Potter!”

He threw back his cape and struck a ridiculously dramatic pose as he offered the unicorn wand to Harry, which made Harry burst out laughing.

“All right,” he said.  “But I have no idea of half the spells you and Dumbledore were using back then… They went right over my head – literally.  However, I would gladly hit you with as many Bat-Bogey hexes as I can muster –“

Almost as he was still speaking, he grabbed the unicorn wand from Tom’s grip and fired off the signature hex he had learnt from Ginny; but Tom was very quick, firing off a deflection spell as he whirled the cape up in front of his face to ward off the attack.  Harry only just about managed to dive out of the way of the deflected hex, and landed on the floor with a heavy thud.

Tom lowered the cape, looking slightly disappointed.

“Well?”

Harry grinned, raising himself on his elbows.  “Not done yet,” he said.  “ _Stupefy_!”

“ _Protego_!”

Again, Tom deflected the spell, his eyes shining, his cheeks ruddy, thrilled at the prospect of a match.  Harry leapt up, firing off the spells quicker and quicker, until they became a barrage of red darts like lightning rain; but Tom deflected each one, running back behind the desk, panting slightly now, but laughing at the same time.

“Come on, Harry!” he sang, flitting behind the bookshelves.  “Is that the best you can do?”

“How about you stop running away?” panted Harry.  “Come out and fight like a man, Riddle.”

Tom’s bright eyes narrowed at him from behind a copy of _Marchbanks_. “You’ll be sorry you said that, Potter.”

A jet of red light shot out from between the shelves, hitting Harry square in the stomach, and he fell over again with a loud grunt.  He lay on the floor, dazed, but not badly hurt; however, catching Tom’s worried face peeking out at him from behind the shelf, he decided to milk it for all it was worth.

“Owww…” he moaned.  “Right in the gut… I think you ruptured my spleen.”

“What?” said Tom.  “Really?” 

He ran over to Harry and knelt beside him, placing his hands gently on Harry’s stomach, but Harry grinned and pulled him down on top of him. He raised his eyebrows, surprised to feel Tom’s arousal through his trousers.  He could have sworn that, since the diary had been destroyed, Tom had become a lot more… well, horny.

Not that Harry was complaining.

“Nah. I’m fine.”

Tom smiled, satisfied that no great harm had been done. 

“I can’t believe we never did this before.  I just _love_ trouncing you, Harry Potter…”

“Oh yeah?  I bet I know what you’d love even more…”

He heard Tom’s dark laughter in his ear, and hair tickling his face as Tom kissed his neck.  “What’s that, I wonder?”

Harry breathed in his scent deeply, that silly, flowery-familiar smell of pomade, so incongruous with the black cape and the evil grin.

“Fucking me… Right here, on this floor…” Harry whispered.

He felt Tom’s heart start to hammer at what seemed like far too many beats per minute to be healthy.

***

Afterwards, they lay tangled together, weak and spent, hardly aware of themselves, or of what had happened.  Harry’s scar had gone incandescent and the light had blinded him; he thought he might have passed out, and had even gone as far as seeing the pearly gates of King's Cross. 

Tom had heard the excruciatingly beautiful song of the phoenix, and seen dozens of lightning bolts dancing before his closed eyes.  He sighed, utterly content, but slightly worried; this couldn’t happen every time they did duelling practice, or they would never make any progress.

“Are you… seriously… thinking about that… now?” murmured Harry.

“Hm?”

“I can… hear your… thoughts…  You’re sounding like Hermione again…”

“Oh,” panted Tom.  “Sorry.” 

He tried his best to close his mind.  It wouldn’t do well to keep the connection live.  Not now, at any rate.

***

“I need you to try something stronger,” Tom said, the following day.  “I bet Dumbledore doesn’t just use stunning spells, does he?”

“No,” conceded Harry.  He thought back to the duel he had witnessed between Dumbledore and Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic.  The memory was old by now – nearly five years had gone by – but it was still as clear as day.  He’d never witnessed such a spectacular display of magic between two wizards before, or since.  “As I remember, he made a statue come alive and used that as a kind of shield.”

“Impressive,” muttered Tom.  “I think I could do that… just an animating charm, I suppose… but without studying the thing in advance it’d probably take more time than it was worth.”

“You did something kind of cool with a snake…”

Tom smiled faintly.  “Ah yes. My signature... _Serpensortia_.”

“Well, not really,” said Harry, frowning doubtfully.  “Your signature was more _Avada Kedvra_ , if I’m honest.  You used that a lot.  Like, _a lot_ , a lot.  I hardly ever saw you use anything else.”

Tom shrugged.  “It’s efficient.”

Harry’s frown deepened.  Tom was far too reliant on that spell for his own good.  In Harry’s experience, it was not the failsafe, surefire killing mechanism Tom seemed to think it was.  It was a blunt instrument, clumsy against Dumbledore’s razor-like intelligence.

“It’s predictable, Tom.  With Dumbledore, you need to be… surprising.  Do something he won’t expect.”

“He won’t _expect_ Gellert Grindelwald to hit him with a killing curse…”

Harry groaned, shaking his head at Tom’s infernal arrogance.   “It’s good to be confident, but you need to be prepared for any eventuality –“

“Then _help_ me,” Tom hissed.  “Hit me with something stronger than ‘ _Stupefy_ ’ or your dear little disarming spell…”

Harry started to feel annoyed.  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“You won’t!” said Tom, his eyes gleaming.  “What’s the worst spell you’ve ever used…?  The bat-bogey hex…? Come on…”

“Well… There’s… there’s _sectumsempra_ , I guess…?”

“What?”

“ _Sectumsempra_!”

A jet of white light sprang from the unicorn wand, which Tom only just managed to dodge.  Part of the spell grazed his cheek, leaving a thin, razor like cut, which bloomed with droplets of red blood.  He touched his pale fingers to the wound and examined them for a moment, surprised; then he looked up at Harry.

“Hm!” he grunted.  “That’s more like it!  Again!”

Harry he drew back his wand, but the curse would not come again; he was shocked he had even done it in the first place.

“I can’t,” he said, miserably.

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” Tom said in a strange, high, mocking voice.  “Are you really that weak, Harry?”

“No!” Harry yelled.  “I just don’t like hurting people – especially not _you_!”

Tom’s eyes shone with an odd gleam; once again, Harry was struck by the fact that he seemed taller, and for the first time he realised that he was levitating a few inches off the floor.  He floated slowly backwards, the black cape trailing.

“Me?  _Me_?  Don’t you know who I am, Harry?”

He rose higher and higher, and the cloak billowed up suddenly, despite there being no wind, and flapped around Tom’s body like a cocoon, obscuring his face.

“Wh – what are you doing?” Harry stammered, a cold, queasy fear building in his stomach.

“It’s me, Harry,” hissed the high, cold voice.  “Don’t you remember me…? Don’t you remember what I did?”

In the midst of the fluttering black folds of the cape, Harry caught sight of something that made him sick to his stomach… A white, snakelike face, with gleaming red eyes…  It hissed at him again, laughing.

“I killed them, didn’t I?  I killed your parents!  And you don’t have the heart to even _try_ to hurt me back?  Do you still _love_ me now, Harry?”

 The queasy feeling turned into pure rage; but instead of raising his wand, Harry cast it aside, and it clattered to the floor, sliding to the other side of the room.  The red eyes widened in surprise.  Harry lunged forward, catching the cape in his hands and yanking hard, pulling Tom to the floor with the sheer force of his arms.  He yelped, and hit the ground with a hard thud, and Harry caught hold of his shoulders, slamming them back against the floor repeatedly.

“Don’t you ever… ever… ever… _ever_ do that again,” he spat, punctuating each ‘ever’ with the dull sound of Tom’s head knocking against the wooden floorboards.  Tom coughed and spluttered, his face back to normal, screwed up, flinching in the face of Harry’s fury.

“All right!  All right!  I won’t… I won’t…”

Harry snarled down at Tom, anger and disgust twisting his features.  His breathing was ragged, and tears stung his eyes, as he shook his head, trying to make sense in his mind of what he had just seen.  Then his breathing slowed, and he gradually released Tom’s shoulders from his iron grip.  The other boy gazed up at him, his eyes dark again now, and serious.

“I just wanted to see you angry… I thought maybe you’d…”

“I know what you thought.  But it doesn’t work on me.”

“I see that now.”

“Good.”  Harry stood up.  “And for the record – yes, I still love you.  You can’t change that just by trying to scare me.”

Still curled on the floor, Tom looked at him, his sad eyes huge black wells in his pale face.  He said nothing, but a odd shiver seemed to run through his entire body.


	22. Goblets and Liars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, so I've got a laptop now! This chapter is pretty long, and there isn't much Harry/Tom but I thought it was necessary for the story. I hope you guys are not too bored by it. Tom will be back in the next chapter, I promise!

At last, the evening of the ball was upon them.  It was strange to think that Gellert Grindelwald, one of the most dangerous dark wizards in history, would soon be among them, sipping champagne and knocking back canapés as though Britain and Germany weren't currently trying to wipe each other off the map.

Fleamont  was rather relieved that he would not be attending the ball in person.  Despite sending an owl with Hufflepuff's cup and an apologetic note, he had not received a reply from Euphemia.  Without his Slytherin _Cyrano,_ he was not the most gifted epistolist, and he at least preferred his Roxanne’s silence to whatever storm was brewing for him when they finally met. 

Harry had hoped he would be able to avoid her, but now, given the outfit his tasteless grandfather had selected for him, that seemed pretty unlikely; he stared dubiously into the ornate Baroque mirror as Fleamont and Septimus helped him on with Fleamont’s most fetching dress-robes.  They were a bright, dazzling white with a trailing hem, and worn over a loud pink shirt with a high, starched arrow collar and a solid gold dicky-bow. 

“Well?” said Fleamont, expectantly.

“Er…” said Harry, glancing at Septimus for help, but the redhead only shrugged sympathetically. “It… isn’t exactly my style.” 

"But that's what _I_ would wear," said Fleamont.  "And you're supposed to be me, not you."

Tom poked his head into Harry's dressing room as he passed by with a large barrel of _Sleekeazy_ to ease the Basilisk's passage through the underground railway tubes.  He silently looked him up and down a few times before snickering and sauntering away. 

“Yeah, fuck you,” Harry called after him.

“Maybe later…” came Tom’s reply  from somewhere down the corridor.

***

When it was finally time to leave, Harry and Nott joined Tom in the study to receive their polyjuice potion rations.  They were joined by Fleamont and Septimus, who were donating a lock of their hair each;  Fleamont handed over his slick, greasy strand very reverently.

“Take care of it, grandson,” he said, with a solemn expression.  “It is the foundation of the Potter empire, after all.”

Harry took it and dropped it into the potion, which turned a pale yellow colour; a thick, oily scum of _Sleekeazy_ floated on the top.

“Eurgh,” said Harry.

"You should both have plenty of time," said Tom, exuding an air of outward calm, although Harry could tell he was fussing slightly over the preparations.  "I've brewed this with the utmost care, and in any case, you'll only need a couple of hours - however, pre-stewed lacewing flies can sometimes be a little temperamental, so let's try not to drag this out."

"We have every faith in you, my Lord," said Nott, loyally, whose potion was a rather predictable shade of flaming red.

Tom smiled at him gratefully.  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Harry pressed Tom’s hand, and was moved to find it warm, and damp with perspiration.  Evidently, Tom was much more nervous than he let on. 

"You be careful, too," he said, the simplicity of his words belying the anxious churning of his stomach.

He had a rather ominous feeling about the whole escapade; it was definitely one of the craziest things he had ever done, and he had… well, between driving a flying car into the whomping willow, participating in the Triwizard Tournament aged only fourteen, and walking into the Forbidden Forest to meet Certain Death at the hands of Lord Voldemort, let's just say Harry had a lot of experience in the general area of actions rarely taken by those of sound mind.  

He wished he'd had the chance to spend more time alone with Tom over the past few days, but the preparations for the coup had kept him busy, and in almost constant council with the other Death Eaters.  He and Harry had continued their duelling practice, but after the emotionally fraught second session, Harry felt Tom to be distant again, sensing his mind retreating, and putting up walls every time Harry tried to push closer with his own.  Harry tried to tell himself it was because of their fight, but he couldn't help fretting over the niggling feeling that it was his declaration of love, rather than his anger, that had put such an uncomfortable gulf between them. 

He still couldn't quite believe he had said something as crazy as “I love you” to _Tom Riddle_ , of all people, even though he could not deny that the feelings were true. As a teenager, it had been a constant source of irritation, and even outright anger, that his whole life had revolved around Voldemort when he'd had no say in the matter.  But this time, he _had_ had a choice of sorts… and he had inexplicably chosen _him_ , again… and something made him feel sure that, given the opportunity, he would go on choosing Tom, even if they met in a thousand different worlds, or a billion different realities; or else, Tom would choose him, Harry, as he had done that fateful Hallowe'en night. 

"I'm always careful," said Tom, slipping his hand from Harry’s grasp.

***

Harry-as-Fleamont, Nott-as-Septimus, and Avery-as- _Daily-Prophet-Reporter_ (which, Harry found out, involved nothing more than transfiguring his upper lip to grow a very elaborate, very false moustache) were driven to the Ministry in the trusty Phantom II by Sooty, Fleamont’s house elf.  The exterior of the Ministry looked as ordinary as always, accessible as it was by the usual red telephone box; however, once they had all piled in and descended to the foyer, things took a turn for the carnivalesque.

The whole foyer was lit up with bright lights, and adorned with banners which flashed alternately between the white, red and gold of the Order of the Phoenix and the dark silver symbol of the Deathly Hallows which Grindelwald had appropriated.  There were red carpets leading from the visitors’ entrance and each of the fireplaces, and the bulbs of what seemed like hundreds of camera flashes went off as soon as Harry stepped onto it.  Harry beamed vacantly, as he had done countless times before in similar situations  - if there was something he was used to, it was getting his photo taken when he least expected it.

A smart blonde witch with red lipstick relieved them of their wands at the entrance of the banqueting hall, citing “security reasons.”  Everything considered, this was probably reasonable; but Harry still felt a sense of unease handing his over.  The banqueting hall of the Ministry was vast, and decorated with the same flashing banners that had adorned the foyer.  Behind these, the walls were pained with giant, moving murals depicting the greatest moments in British magical history and the witches and wizards who had participated in them: Merlin looking on as the young King Arthur pulled _Excalibur_ from the stone; Birnam wood advancing towards defeat of the tyrant Macbeth, as prophesied by the Weird Sisters (not the band); and the miraculous change in weather engineered by John Dee, the court magician to Elizabeth I, tossing the wreckage of the Spanish Armada on the stormy waves of the sea.  Harry thought for a moment whether wizards and muggles coexisting hadn’t been something positive, after all.

The set-up was something like Hogwarts, with long dining tables arranged  down the length of the hall, and a high table, with slightly more elaborate floral arrangements, laid out at the end of the room on a raised dais.  Several puffed-up, important looking people were already seated here, which Nott pointed out as Elphias Doge, the deputy Minister, Leonard Spencer-Moon, the Shadow Minister, and Arcturus Black, the Ministry’s Private Secretary, a pureblood sympathiser who for reasons either of blamelessness or budget (seeing as he personally contributed a great deal of gold to the Ministry coffers) Dumbledore had not yet been able to replace.

In the corner, a small, nervous-looking man was playing Cole Porter tunes on a very ordinary looking piano.  During each piece, he would concentrate very pointedly on the music; but in between, he would look around him, blink slowly and wipe his brow with an odd kind of disbelief.

“I can’t _believe_ they’ve actually got a muggle playing the music,” boomed a loud, obnoxious voice from somewhere to Harry’s left.  He turned, to catch sight of a statuesque witch with heavy-lidded eyes and shining dark hair pulled up into a bun.  She wore handsome robes of emerald velvet, and bore such a striking resemblance to Bellatrix Lestrange that Harry nearly jumped out of his skin.  Hanging off her arm was a vapid-looking wizard with long, platinum blond locks, who shook his head disapprovingly.

“Cedrella darling!” cried Avery, elbowing Harry out of the way in order to exchange air-kisses with the newcomer.  “How simply too-delightful to see you… a vision of loveliness as ever… and such robes… bespoke Twilfitt and Tattings, I imagine?”

“Rupert,” said Cedrella, haughtily, causing Harry to frown for a moment, before realising that this must have been Avery’s first name.  “Correct as always… I’m wearing my grandmother Ursula’s diamonds, as well, if you want to put that in your awful little rag… What _is_ that growing on your lip, by the way, it looks positively feral…  I was just saying to Abraxas here, how disgraceful it is that they’ve allowed a muggle at an event like this…”

“ _I_ think it’s charming,” said a tall, black witch to Harry’s right.  She wore scarlet robes made from a floaty material, and a large hibiscus flower adorned her wild curls.  Harry noticed, with both excitement and a slight sinking feeling, that, although beautiful, she also had a rather large mole on one side of her nose, which could only mean one thing -

“Look sharp,” whispered Nott.  “That’s Euphemia Shacklebolt.  She hates you, by the way.”

“I _know_ ,” said Harry, through gritted teeth, as Euphemia gazed at him as though he was something she had just wiped off the bottom of her shoe.

“Rupert… Septimus…” she said, pointedly ignoring Harry.  She raised an eyebrow.  “Since when were you two chums?”

“Er…” said Nott.

“Weasley,” Cedrella interrupted, saving Nott the trouble of having to make up some outlandish excuse.  “Father says you haven’t been coming into work recently… what’s up?”

“I’ve been ill,” said Nott, vaguely.

“Really?” said Euphemia.  “Because _my_ father says that your illness suspiciously coincided with the mass breakout from Azkaban a few weeks back.  And Mulciber has been saying you’ve been expelled from the Order.”

“Hmm…” said Nott, grabbing a goblet of champagne from a passing house elf and taking a large gulp, which he immediately spat out. 

“Yuck,” he said.  “What is this _garbage_?  Bring me something decent, will you, a _Clos d'Ambonnay_ , there’s a good elf…”

Cedrella raised an eyebrow.  “ _Clos d'Ambonnay_? I didn’t know Weasleys had taste.”

“ _This_ one does,” said Nott.

Cedrella looked intrigued.

“Mulciber?” said Harry, quietly, to Avery.  “Isn’t he a Death Eater?”

Avery made a face.  “Ew, as _if_.  He’s common as muck.  His father is the general command of the Order… That’s him, over there.  The whole family are a bunch of lowlifes, I think they just like beating people up…  Weasley had better make himself scarce.”

He elbowed Nott, who quickly hid himself behind a tall arrangement of _hors-d’oeuvres,_ looking suddenly very interested in the salmon mousse.  Harry followed Avery’s gaze and recognised the burly, thuggish wizard who had been after him on the very first night when Tom had come to his rescue.  He thought it rather strange that the family’s allegiance seemed to have shifted so dramatically on either side of the pensieve, but Avery was probably right: some people just liked violence, the cause being largely irrelevant.

Euphemia started to speak again, in a loud voice.

“I think it is shameful that Dumbledore expects me to be taken in to dinner by an arms dealer who has connections with Grindelwald’s spies,” she said, pointedly.

“What?” said Harry.  “I’m not an arms dealer.”

Euphemia ignored him.

“Why do you say that, Euphemia, dear?” asked Avery.

“That _Sleekeazy_ stuff.  Father says Grindelwald imports it by the barrel.  Surely he can’t want all that just for his _hair_ –“

“He might,” said Harry, remembering Grindelwald’s glistening tresses.

“Is it true that Roonil Wazlib is your cousin?” asked Abraxas, suddenly.  He bore a certain resemblance to Lucius Malfoy, only where the latter’s lip always seemed to be curled in derision, Abraxas by contrast had a clear, unassuming gaze, which made all the difference.  Harry thought he felt rather sorry for him; it looked as though Cedrella bossed him around a lot.

“No,” said Harry.  “He isn’t even a real person.  Avery just made him up for his column, didn’t you, Ave?”

“He _is_ real,” said Cedrella, before  Avery could respond.  “Mummy had Hepzibah Smith round to tea the other day, and she said she met him in person, and that he cheated her out of several of her most prized possessions… even the cup of her ancestor, Helga Hufflepuff.  Come to think of it, I’m sure she mentioned you, too, Fleabag…”

“Uh…” said Harry, sweating slightly, and thinking it might be time to join Nott behind the salmon _hors-d’oeuvres_. 

“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest,” said Euphemia, gracing Harry with a look of disgust.  “I always knew there was something shifty about Fleabag.  I never touch that hair potion now, you never know what he puts in it.”  She shook out her bushy natural curls to prove the point.

“Your hair is just too adorable as it is,” said Avery said, ingratiatingly.

“He’s right, you know,” said Harry, endeavouring to score some points on Fleamont’s behalf.  “I’ve always thought so.” 

Euphemia looked askance at him, but said nothing.

The crowd suddenly surged forward, and Harry became aware that something extraordinary was occurring at the other end of the banqueting hall, towards the high table.  The main banner of the Deathly Hallows had begun to billow and flap violently, and the silver triangular symbol glowed white-hot.  It grew bigger and bigger, until it almost seemed to leave the confines of the fabric itself.  The line symbolising the Elder Wand at the centre shone even more brightly than the rest, eventually causing the assembled audience to shield their eyes in the face of the glare; finally the banner split in two, right down the middle, and from behind it there poured a stream of marching wizards in black and silver robes.  They sang heartily to a loud, militaristic tune as they came, drowning out the weak strains of “Anything Goes” from the aghast muggle pianist.

_Unbreakable union of wizards and muggles,_

_Created by joining our wills, wands and hands,_

_And our glorious leader, great Grindelwald’s struggles_

_Inspired us to spread unity in all lands._

_Long live the union, and long live our leader!_

_Together at last in hallowed brotherhood!_

_We strive ever forward, division forgotten,_

_Together, forever, for the greater good!_

The uniformed wizards split out, filing down the banqueting hall between each of the long tables and then into the crowd of champagne-drinkers, causing them to fall back against the walls.  Aside from the members of the Order, who were looking on approvingly, the rest of the company of witches and wizards exchanged worried glances; whilst each of the singing newcomers clearly held a wand in their right hand, the British guests had been asked to leave theirs at the door, and to top it off, they were all slightly sozzled and did not exactly have their wits about them.

Finally, a handsome wizard with golden curls and trailing sky-blue robes emerged from the severed banner, and the remaining pieces of fabric divided up into ever-smaller pieces before floating through the air like twinkling confetti.

The wizard raised his arms, and his marching band of armed wizards fell suddenly silent.  Still with his hands outstretched, he gazed around the room, his blue eyes sparkling and a wild smile on his beautiful face.  Harry recognised the long pale wand he held in his hand as the Deathstick with which he had finally defeated Lord Voldemort at the battle of Hogwarts.

“Grrreetings, London,” said Grindelwald.


	23. Vanitas Vanitatum

The various reporters and photographers surged forward, bulbs flashing and notebooks at the ready.

“Comrade Grindelwald,” someone shouted.  “Iphigenia Lovegood, _The Quibbler_.  Can you explain what you mean by your motto _For The Greater Good_?”

“Ah,” said Grindelwald.  “Vell… It simply means that ve ought to vork together tovards somesing greater than ourselves, even though sacrifices may have to be made along the way… Everysing we do must be for some higher purrrpose…”

“Like dismantling a long-established principle of international wizarding law?”

“Like I said… sacrifices…”

“Do you really want us to live alongside muggles, or do you just plan on enslaving them?”

Grindelwald frowned.  “Somebody else must have the chance to ask a question…”

“Chancellor Grindelwald,” said another voice.  “This is Dorian Macmillan, current affairs, _Daily Prophet_.  The recent Diagon Alley incident – many here in Britain believe that was a sign of your willingness to use muggle weaponry against wizards.  Don’t you think that is a form of treachery against your own kind?”

Grindelwald’s frown deepened.  “I consider my own kind to be _human_ kind, Herr Macmillan… Unfortunately, I do not control the movements of the _Luftwaffe_ , vich may result in some… undesirable occurrences…  Next question, please.  You there, vith the dead rat on your lip,” he said, indicating Avery.

“Thank you, Lord Grindelwald – I mean – Comrade Chancellor –“ he began, bobbing his head politely.  “The readers of the _Daily Prophet_ social column would like to know… What do you use to keep your hair looking so shiny?”

Grindelwald smiled indulgently, revealing a row of perfectly white and rather sharp teeth.

“Ah, vell. Zat’s easy.  I use _Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Trreatment_ , of course.”  He pulled a small container out of the sleeve of his robe.  “ _Two drops tames even ze most bozzersome barrnet_.”

The cameras flashed again.

“Ugh,” said Euphemia.

“All right, all right,” said Deputy-Minister Doge.  “That’s quite enough questions for this evening.  The _Hexenkanzler_ will be around all week to satisfy your various curiosities… Now is the time to set aside our difference and focus on what unites us… Allow me to propose a toast – to peace!”

“To peace!” echoed the company, somewhat half-heartedly.

Grindelwald’s army of wizards parted, allowing the various guests to make their way towards the tables to be seated.  Harry tried to take Euphemia’s arm, but she shrugged him off, roughly.

“I can’t believe you tried to buy me off with something you stole from a poor, defenceless old lady.  That’s just like you – Fleabag by name, Fleabag by nature!  Come on, Abraxas.  You can take me in, instead.”

She linked arms with Abraxas Malfoy, who was watching, dismayed, as Cedrella Black and Septimus Weasley sat down together, deep in a _tête-à-tête_.  Harry looked around for Avery, but he was nowhere to be seen;  Harry caught sight of him later, fawning over somebody who looked suspiciously like Neville Longbottom’s grandmother.  For now, Harry was all alone.

He felt a tug at his sleeve.  A small house elf stood at his side, bearing a silver tray piled high with a pyramid of slender white cylinders.

“Cigarette, Mister Potter, sir?” he squeaked.

“You know what,” said Harry.  “I think I will.”

He took one and put it to his lips.  As he inhaled, the house elf clicked his fingers, setting the end alight.

“Thanks,” said Harry.  He went out onto the balcony, which looked down onto the foyer below.  He scanned the various windows that looked onto the courtyard, wondering which one was Dumbledore’s office, containing the pensieve which was his last hope for a journey home.

Suddenly, his left forearm started burning, and he clutched at his arm in pain.  Drawing up his sleeve, he saw his Dark Mark was glowing a deep red.  He touched it with his forefinger and drew it closer to his lips.

“Er… hello?” he said, uncertainly.

“Harry!” hissed Tom’s voice, over a great deal of static and interference.  “Where _are_ you?  We’ve been waiting in this sewer for over an hour!”

Harry could hear Rosier and Lestrange bickering in the background.

“Rosy, get off!  You’re standing on my neck –“

“Oh, _that’s_ what that is?  I thought this pipe was particularly bendy… Why do you have such a _bendy_ neck, Lestrange?”

“Oww!  My Lord, tell him to stop –“

“ _Let me kill them, Masssssster… Let me tear_ –“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Tom.

“Sorry,” Harry said.  “Grindelwald’s only just arrived… I’ve been mingling.”

“Oh, _mingling_ ,” said Tom sarcastically.  Harry thought he might have detected the tiniest hint of jealousy.  “Well, I do hope you’ve been having _fun_ , Harry.  Save me a smoked salmon blini, won’t you? AND MAKE SURE YOU GET GRINDELWALD INTO THE FUCKING TOILET IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH.”

The connection cut off abruptly, and the Dark Mark returned to its usual black colour.  Harry sighed, deeply.

“Something troubling you, Herr Potter?”

Harry whipped around sharply, to see Gellert Grindelwald emerge from the double doors onto the balcony.  He held a cigarette in a long holder between his fingers, which emitted puffs of purple smoke at odd intervals.  The Elder Wand was just visible, poking out of a pocket in his robes.  Harry’s heart leapt into his mouth.

“Oh,” he said, stammering.  “I – uh – not really, no.”

Grindelwald smiled genially and cast his eyes around the internal courtyard of the Ministry.  Up close, he seemed a little older than Harry had originally thought, and there were a few strands of silver running through the luxurious golden locks.

“It is sad, is it not, Herr Potter, that ve must hide underground, like so many frightened mices?  From here, one cannot even feel the vind on one’s face…”

“I suppose,” said Harry, guardedly.

“There are those who say it is for our own protection…  But vat kind of life is this to protect?  Surely to truly live… one must be free… and vhy should _they_ be free, but not us?  It’s the wrong vay around, surely…”

Harry grunted non-commitally.

“Ah vell,” said Grindelwald, flicking his ash down into the foyer.  “Enough about politics.  There is something serious I wish to discuss with you.  How did I do just now, at the press conference, with the _Sleekeazy_?  I cannot thank you enough for sending those free samples… they have been a – vat is the vord - lifesaver.”

“They have?” said Harry, wondering whether this had been one of Tom’s plots to make Grindelwald more pliable, or whether Fleamont had genuinely encouraged the _Hexenkanzler_ to use his products in order to open up the continental market, giving scant thought to any moral consideration. It could easily have been either.

“Ja,” said Grindelwald.  “But I should like, if I may, to ask of you another little favour… I… ugh, how should I put this… It has been some time since I vas here in England… over tventy years, in fact… Your Minister of Magic – Herr Dumbledore – he doesn’t see me since – a long time…  I mean, ve talked over the Floo netvork and I sent him pictures and sings but… vat I’m trying to say is… I don’t vant him to be… disappointed.”

“Disappointed?” Harry echoed, surprised.  “With you?”

“Ja,” said Grindelwald.  “If you could help me do something with the hairs… Perhaps that could improve… he did always used to like… my hairs…”

“Oh,” said Harry.  “I see – what you mean.  Well, if you ask me, your hairs – I mean, your hair – looks very nice as it is.  But perhaps  there is something we could do… why don’t we step into the bathroom for a moment?”

“Good idea,” said Grindelwald.  He turned on his heel in a military fashion and strode away towards the lavatory.  Harry lingered for a moment on the balcony, his stomach turning with excitement.  Then he drew back his sleeve and touched the Dark Mark on his forearm.

“Dark wizard incoming,” he whispered.

“ _Finally_ ,” said Tom.  There was a pause, after which he added, rather begrudgingly:  “Good work, Harry.”

Harry grinned, glowing with pride.

 

*******

“So,” said Harry, standing with Grindelwald in front of one of the tall, marble mirrors in the men’s lavatory.  “You used to wear your hair shorter than this, didn’t you?” He thought back to the portrait he'd once seen in Godric's Hollow.

“A little,” said Grindelwald.  “My aunt Bathilda… She didn’t like long hair on men… she thought it vas very rebellious… Can you imagine, she thought _Albus_ was a bad influence on _me_?”

Grindelwald threw back his head, laughing loudly.  Harry gave a polite chuckle, lifting his hand to his mouth.

“Now,” he whispered, into his sleeve.

There was a strange rattling sound from one of the cublicles.  Grindelwald turned his head in the direction of the noise.

 “Vat vas that?” he said.

“ _Kill… time to kill…_ ” murmured the Basilisk.

“Nothing,” said Harry, gripping Grindelwald’s head and forcing it back towards the mirror.  “Keep your head straight. I need to assess the length.”

“ _I smell blood…_ ” hissed the Basilisk.

“Get out of the _way_ , Lestrange,” said Rosier.

Grindelwald turned his head again.  “There’s somebody else in here…”

“I don’t think so,” said Harry, his palms beginning to sweat with nerves.  “Relax, and keep your eyes on the mirror.  Think of how happy Dumbledore will be when he sees you.”

He simply could not bring himself to be complicit in Grindelwald’s murder, no matter how evil he was supposed to be, or how many people he had killed or tortured.  He was a person, after all, with likes, dislikes, loves, insecurities…  Something, in a small way, reminded him of Tom.

Grindelwald sighed, and turned back towards the mirror.

“ _Blood… I SMELL BLOOD…_!”

Harry screwed his eyes shut, and backed away from the mirror just in time.  He heard the door of the cublicle slam open, and Grindelwald gasped.  The angry hiss of the Basilisk filled his ears.

“ _NOOOOOOO!_ ” she screamed.  “ _Misssssssssed again… Sssssssorry, bossssss..._ ”

Harry felt relief flood his body as he heard Tom's frustrated scream.

“Damn it to blazes!” yelled Tom, supremely irritated.  “That narcissistic fool.  I should have known he’d be looking in the mirror…”

Harry opened his eye a fraction, careful not to raise his head to where the Basilisk’s golden orbs loomed high above them.  Tom was leaning over Grindelwald’s petrified body, a scowl twisting his features, whilst Rosier and Lestrange stood a little distance off in their Death Eater outfits, looking on nervously.

“I know you don’t like the idea,” ventured Lestrange, cautiously.  “But can’t the Basilisk just eat him, and be done with it?”

“ _No…_ ” said the Basilisk.  “ _I don’t eat wizardsss… Rip… tear… kill… but eat humanssss? No. Bad for digesssstion…_ ”

“Don’t you?” said Harry, surprised.  “What do you eat then?”

“ _Sssspidersss, mosssstly… And the occasssional acromantula…_ ”

“Oh,” said Harry.  “That figures.”

Lestrange frowned. 

“Wait, what? He can talk to snakes, like you?” he said to Tom, who nodded impatiently, still examining Grindelwald’s body.

“That’s probably how they met,” said Rosier.  “I bet Voldemort wrote his _Lonely Hearts_ entry in Parseltongue…”

“But I thought only Slytherin's descendants could do that... Doesn’t that mean they’re related?” said Lestrange, his frown deepening.

“Ha,” said Rosier.  “As if your lot ever cared about that.”

Tom sighed and sat back on his heels, running his hand through his hair.

“I suppose this will just have to do.  You two, take this piece of filth back to Godric’s Hollow and keep an eye on him until I return… maybe we can bury him alive, or something…  This, however…” He drew the Elder Wand from Grindelwald’s pocket slowly and reverently, his dark eyes shining with a red gleam,  “… is exactly what I came for… Now go!”

Lestrange and Rosier nodded.  The Basilisk turned, slithering back towards the cubicle, and the two Death Eaters followed, dragging Grindelwald’s startled, petrified body behind them. 

At last, Tom and Harry were alone again.  Harry grinned.

“Well, that was easy…” he said.

Tom did not look up.  He was still gazing at the Elder Wand cradled in his hands, his hair falling forward, obscuring his eyes.

“Tom…?” said Harry, with slightly more uncertainty.

Tom rose to his feet, his eyes glinting like rubies.

“Yes, Harry,” he said, coldly.  “It was.”

He pointed the Elder Wand directly at Harry’s chest.


	24. ὅς χ’ ἕτερον μὲν κεύθῃ ἐνὶ φρεσίν, ἄλλο δὲ εἴπῃ

“Seriously?” Harry raised an eyebrow.  “We’re going to do this now?”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” said Tom, in the same quiet, cold tone as before.  “But the prophecy says one of us has to die, and I’d much sooner it was you.  I am also in dire need of another horcrux, since you saw fit to destroy one, if not both of them –“

“The ring was totally not my fault,” protested Harry.  Tom had definitely destroyed that one himself by going all gooey with remorse over what he did to his muggle family.

“It _was_!” Tom hissed, growing more furious by the minute.  “You made me feel _bad_ for what I did, looking at me like – well, exactly how you’re looking now.  Disappointed.  _Pitying_.  With your sad, green eyes, and your – stupid glasses – I can’t stand you –“

Now Harry was hurt.  “You said you loved me!”

“I did not,” said Tom, quickly.  “ _You_ said you loved me. I said I was ‘extraordinarily fond’ of you – there’s a difference. If you love someone, you should be prepared to do anything for that person, even die -”

Harry rolled his eyes.  “I can’t believe you’re going to kill me over _semantics_.”

“It’s not semantics, Harry!  It’s destiny!" Tom snapped.  "Now, close those cursed eyes of yours…”

Harry glanced at the mirror.  He still looked pretty much like Fleamont, only now his eyes were a bright, startling green where his grandfather’s were a rather watery blue.  The polyjuice potion must have been starting to wear off, probably due to the lacewing flies.  Frowning, he turned back to Tom.

“No,” he said.

“I said, close them!” Tom screamed, his eyes burning with anger, his face twisted with an inhuman hatred.  “I won’t have you looking at me as I kill you –“

“I will look at you,” said Harry, stubbornly.  “I’m going to _stare_ at you.  I hope you have nightmares about it.  My eyes – _staring_ at you from beyond the grave –“

“Silence!” Tom shrieked, almost hysterical with rage.  “Enough with your foolish chatter!”

He drew back his arm, and the Elder Wand glinted in the flickering candlelight of the bathroom.

“Wait!” Harry said.

Tom lowered the wand a fraction.    A few dark curls had escaped from his neatly styled hair and his cheeks bloomed with an angry flush that made Harry melt a little inside.  God damn it.  Why did he have to look so beautiful, even when he was trying to murder him, for heaven’s sake.

“What now?” he said, annoyed.

“What if – what if the curse rebounds, and you die instead?  I still have my mother’s protection, you know.  But you… well, you _don’t_.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Tom processed this information. 

Then he finally spoke.

“Fuck.” 

The strains of “Let’s Do It” floated in from the banqueting hall, and Harry wondered, with one of those odd kind of thoughts you have at the most inappropriate moments, why nobody else had tried to use the bathroom yet.

“Fuck,” Tom said, again.  “FUCK. FUCK. FUCK." 

In his utter frustration, he kicked one of the copper pipes leading off from the sinks.  His aim was perhaps a little truer than he intended, as it broke the pipe, sending a jet of water squirting out over the floor.  The action also seemed to hurt Tom himself, as he winced and started hopping about, clutching his foot.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked, with genuine concern.

“No!" Tom yelled. "And stop being so sympathetic, will you?  Don’t you understand, you stupid fool?!  I tricked you – I manipulated you – right from the moment we met and you told me about the prophecy –“

“What, really?” said Harry, his eyes wide. 

He thought about the time Tom had taken him to the ice cream fountain, where he had told him everything, hoping to receive honesty in return… Harry had felt such an _understanding_ , and he was so sure Tom had felt it too…  He thought about the beautiful, passionate moment they had shared afterwards… How he had guided Tom’s trembling hands, and his mouth, eager but uncertain on Harry’s yearning erection… how his teeth had scraped just a little, tantalisingly, on the sensitive flesh…

“Stop thinking about that!” snapped Tom, his face scarlet with anger and embarrassment.

“But you were so lovely…” murmured Harry, with disbelief.

“Yes, well,” said Tom.  “I can make myself perfectly _lovely_ when I want to.”

Harry went cold; it felt like his heart was splitting in two.  How had he let himself be fooled so badly, when he ought to have known so much better?  Tom had seemed so genuine… Those flashes of innocence; that slight sense of awkwardness in their most intimate moments… The way he had come almost immediately at the first touch of Harry’s moistened lips on his dick… and then, what had happened with the Diary…  Harry frowned.  Something didn’t add up. 

“Maybe,” he said.  “But you can’t just fake that kind of hopeless inexperience…”

“What do you mean?” said Tom, slightly hesitantly.

Harry narrowed his eyes.  “You'd never done anything like that before... you were still a virgin when you met me, weren’t you?”

He saw the flicker of emotion in Tom’s eyes, and knew he was right before he even spoke. 

“Well – sort of – I –“

“Sort of?” asked Harry, cocking his head to one side with a sly smile.

“I – well - so what if I was!” said Tom, angrily.  “It still didn’t _mean_ anything.”

Harry raised an incredulous eyebrow.  He thought again of the gentleness of Tom’s touch, the burning urgency of his kisses, how pleasure had flooded his entire body when… when… Harry blinked.  But that was it, wasn’t it?  Harry had felt pleasure, not pain, when Tom looked at him, and when they touched… and he was sure Tom felt it too.  The only time it had hurt Tom to touch him was right at the beginning, when they were still unsure…  Surely Lily’s protection would not have been invalidated just by falling into the pensieve - it was in Harry’s blood… which could only mean that Tom had not really _wanted_ to harm Harry, at all.

He lunged forward suddenly; Tom took a step back, drawing the Elder Wand behind him, out of Harry’s reach; but Harry instead grasped at Tom’s other hand, his left, which hung empty by his side.  They stood for a moment just like that, unmoving, in a strange kind of tableau.

“I can touch you,” Harry whispered, savouring the feeling of Tom’s soft hand in his.  He could have kissed it.  “It doesn’t hurt you a bit, does it?”

“So?” said Tom gruffly.  “Just because I chose to abstain from physical relationships doesn’t make me some delicate flower –“

Harry looked up at him, sadly.  “No, I mean... You don’t really want to kill me, do you?”

Tom blinked, confused.

“I –“

He hesitated a moment, staring at his own hand clasped firmly in Harry’s.  Then he snatched his fingers roughly from Harry’s grip.  “I don’t have time for this!  I have important work to do… _Basilisk_ ,” he said, suddenly switching to Parseltongue.  “ _Are you still there?_ ”

“ _Yessss, massssster_ ,” the Basilisk hissed from inside the cubicle.  “ _Asssss you commanded_.”

“ _Finish him, do you hear?  KILL!_ ”

Harry heard a scraping, slithering sound behind him as Tom limped away angrily, clutching the Elder Wand.

“Tom, wait –“

Harry tried to follow him, but the door slammed shut in his face, and he heard the lock turn on the other side.  Harry banged on the door, helplessly.  _Alohomora_ was one of the most difficult spells to cast without a wand.

The realisation of what had just happened seeped in slowly.  Perhaps he had been too hopeful.  Perhaps Tom really had wanted to kill him, and Lily’s protection just didn’t work on this Tom, on the other side of the pensieve.  It was a different universe after all.

He sank down against the door with a sob.  It wasn’t so much being killed by the Basilisk – that he could definitely handle… but being betrayed so callously by the person who, against all rationality, he had fallen so deeply in love with… that stung, more than any venom ever could.  He sniffed; a large tear rolled down his face and splashed onto the floor, forming part of the growing puddle from the broken pipe. 

He could hear the sound of the scales against the wet tiles, moving closer and closer.  Harry didn’t move.  He felt depressed and alone.  Perhaps it was for the best that his short, unhappy life should end here.  He felt the Basilisk’s cold, slimy tail edge around his shoulders and waited for it to squeeze the life out of his body.

Only it didn't feel like so much of a death squeeze as a gentle massage.

“ _There, there_ ,” said the Basilisk.  “ _Don’t cry_.”

“ _I’m not crying_ ,” said Harry, crying.  “ _Just shut up and kill me already.  I welcome death – like – like an old friend… The only friend I’ve got nowadays…_ ”

“ _Isss that ssssssso?_ ” said the Basilisk, patting his shoulder.  “ _You know… You shouldn’t let yourssself get ssssso upsssset… jusssssst over a man…_ ”

“ _But he – he’s such a_ bastard,” Harry sobbed, his nose running and shoulders shaking.  He slammed his fist against the door.

“ _I know… I know… Mosssssst of them are_ ,” said the Basilisk, soothingly.  “ _Idiotssssss, as well… Massssster included…_ ”

“ _He’s the biggest idiot I ever met.  We had something… you know?  Something real… And then he had to go and ruin it by trying to murder me,_ again… _After everything we’ve been through…_ ”

“ _Masssster makessss a lot of missssstakessss… I kept telling him… you’ll regret thisssss… But he wouldn’t lissssssten… He lovessss you really, you know.   I can tell…  And I don’t like to sssee Massster ssssad… That’ssss why I’m not going to kill you…_ ”

" _Yes, but -_ "  Harry paused suddenly when the Basilisk's words had sunk in and gave an astonished snuffle.  “ _You’re not going to kill me_?”

“ _Nooooo, ssssssweetheart …"_ said the Basilisk, kindly. _"Now, move out of the way… I think I can break down the door… Jusssst… make ssssure he doesn’t get himself killed fighting the Minisssster_ …”

Harry up gratefully, careful not to look the Basilisk in the eye, and stood wiping his glasses against his robe while she thumped the door hard with her muscular tail, crushing the wood easily.

“ _Thank you_ ," said Harry.  " _I feel a lot better now, by the way.  You’re surprisingly good at this… relationship talk…_ ”

“ _Honey…_ ” said the Basilisk.  “ _What do you think I did for a thousssand yearsss under a girlssss’ bathroom…?_ ”

***

Harry made his way back into the banqueting hall, were he ran into Avery stuffing his face at the dessert counter.  Part of his moustache seemed to have come off into the cream cake he was eating.

“Hullo, Harry,” he said, cheerfully, with his mouth full.  “I thought you were supposed to be dead.”

“What!” said Harry, angrily.  “You were in on this as well?”

“Mm,” said Avery, picking a couple of blonde hairs from the whipped cream and shoving the rest of the cake into his mouth.  “Tom had me discredit you in the _Daily Prophet_ so that your death wouldn’t seem too suspicious.”

Harry stared at Avery, his mouth agape.  Tom had really thought the whole thing through.  Then he scowled.

“I’ll _kill_ him,” he growled.  “I really will –“

“Ooh,” said Avery.  “I’d certainly like to see you try… Oh dear, I wish people wouldn’t _stare_ so.”

Harry glanced about him. Several of the other guests around the dessert table were giving him very funny looks indeed.

A short, fat wizard in black and yellow dress robes standing near the chocolate fountain peered at Harry through his monocle.  "I say, Belinda," he said.  “Isn’t that that… Wazlib fellow?”

“Merlin’s beard,” said a reedy witch in purple standing beside him. “I think it is – look – he’s got the scar!”

“Why yes - Scarface Wazlib!” someone else gasped.

“Shit,” said Harry, furiously trying to comb his hair over his forehead.  This was rather difficult, however, seeing as it had been slicked back with copious amounts of _Sleekeazy_ , and the stuff seemed to set like a rock when it was dry.  Avery had a better idea.

He grabbed hold of Harry’s stiff arrow collar and dunked him face first into the tray of cream cakes.

“Now would be a good time to run,” he said.

Harry ran. 

Blundering blindly through the astonished crowds, he made towards the shadowy colonnade at the far  end of the hall, whilst divesting himself of the heavy gold bow-tie and trying to wipe the cream from his glasses.  He licked his fingers furiously, but all his efforts only seemed to result in his field of vision becoming a gloopy, white haze.  The guests at the gala ball were like little pieces of coloured flint, darting before his eyes in various shades of cobalt, ochre and puce.

His course was suddenly halted, however, by a dazzling apparition of orange, red and gold which seemingly sprang from  nowhere; Harry felt himself collide with something soft and… feathery.

 “Good heavens!” said a familiar voice.  “Mr Potter!  Where on earth are you running to, covered in –“ There was a pause, and Harry felt a slender finger gently trace the underside of his chin. “…Lemon _crème patissière_ , if my tastebuds don’t deceive me.”

"Uh, excuse me," said Harry.  "I was just trying to - er - find the bathroom -"

"A wise course of action given the circumstances," said Dumbledore.  "But alas, you are going the wrong way - the lavatories are over there."  The blurry orange shape shifted in front of him.  "Before you scurry off, however - you don't happen to have seen the _Hexenkanzler_ , do you?  Unfortunately, my arrival was - delayed, and I wasn't able to meet him.  Somebody told me they had seen him with you…"

"Uh," said Harry, his mind racing.  "Yes, I… I'm not sure where he went, he…"

"Albus," came Grindelwald's voice from somewhere behind Harry.

"Ah!  Gellert!"  Dumbledore sounded slightly breathless.  "I was getting worried.  Elphias said you'd all but disappeared…"

"I merely stepped out for a cigarette."

Harry cringed.  Although the vocal chords were evidently the same, the tone was far too cold and disconnected, lacking the hint of merry humour which always seemed to lurk in the back of the the real Grindelwald's throat.

"Ah… I see… well, it is - it's wonderful to see you again, Gellert." 

There was no hint of suspicion in Dumbledore’s genial tone, even if he seemed ever so slightly put out by Gellert’s uncharacteristic frostiness.  Then again, with Dumbledore, you could never really tell.

"Indeed," said Tom, moving closer, a sky-blue-and-gold blur through Harry's smeared lenses.  "Perhaps we can go somewhere more private…"

He glanced in Harry’s direction, although Harry could not quite make out the expression on his face.  Judging by the calmness in his scar, it seemed Tom had not recognised him. Dumbledore gave an astonished laugh. 

"So soon?  The gala is still in full swing…"

"Exactly," said Tom, insistently. "Let's leave them to it, shall we?  There are things I wish to discuss with you… alone."

Harry sighed inwardly – Tom seemed so obvious to him.  However, to his surprise, Dumbledore laughed again despite his the _Hexenkanzler_ ’s inexplicably ominous tone.  Harry felt slightly embarrassed for him; he sounded like a giggling schoolgirl. 

"Well, if you insist… It has been quite some time, hasn't it?”  He turned towards Harry apologetically.  “Do excuse us…"

He reached out to take the Chancellor's arm.  Grindelwald surrendered it, and they both swished off together through the colonnade, their long robes trailing behind them.


End file.
